


Space Cowboys

by sistercacao



Category: Gundam Wing
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M, Work In Progress
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-24
Updated: 2018-01-23
Packaged: 2019-03-08 19:13:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 26,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13464735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sistercacao/pseuds/sistercacao
Summary: Wufei and Heero are bounty hunters, barely scraping by on small-fry bounties. Their world is small, but comfortable. But a ragtag group of new companions- a thief, a billionaire heir, an assassin- and a mysterious foe who appears to know Heero from a past he can't remember, are about to change all that.





	1. Forever Broke

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by Cowboy Bebop :) Unfinished but hopefully not abandoned. I know the rest of the plot to this is bouncing around in my head somewhere.

_Chapter One: Forever Broke_  
  
  
The cabin was dark and comforting in the eternal midnight of open space. In the center stood a figure, half-dressed, his body graceful and serene in its movements– the extension of his legs, the sweep of arms in determined, precise arcs. His hair was uncombed, his bed unmade, as if he had awoken and immediately rose to begin his exercises. Quiet, controlled breaths filled the room and mingled with the strains of Pachelbel’s Canon in D floating up from somewhere below. His eyes were closed, focused inward.  
  
It was the smell of cigarette smoke, rather than the  _whoosh_  of the opened hatch, that caught his attention first. Opening murky blue eyes, he drew his heavy brows together and focused his gaze on the door to his room, where a man in a stained white apron was taking in his disheveled appearance, amusement barely masked in his coal-black eyes. A cigarette hung like an afterthought from his lips, ash dangling precariously from the end.  
  
“Breakfast is ready, if you’re interested,” the intruder said. “Stir-fry mushrooms and chicken.” He turned to leave the man to his privacy, but paused in the doorway and ducked his head back in with a smirk. “I didn’t know you practiced Tai Chi, Heero.”  
  
His concentration now fully broken, Heero stifled a yawn behind his palm, running a hand through his thick bangs. “I thought I’d give it a shot after you told me I should loosen up.”  
  
“Let’s hope it does the trick,” the man said, and this time he left the room for good, the hatch zipping shut behind him. Heero, alone once more, turned in the darkness of his room and moved automatically to the dresser beside his bed, pulling out a full set of clothes to change into for the day. The aroma of food floated up with the music from below. It smelled better than Heero guessed it would taste. He knew how long that chicken had been sitting in the refrigerator, after all.  
  
When the motions of dressing had been completed and Heero had brushed his teeth, he left his room, briefly assaulted by sensory input– the tantalizing smell of breakfast, the strains of music, the glaring light of the hallway lamps.  
  
“Canon in D again, Wufei?” he muttered, taking a seat on the couch in what passed for a living room on their out-of-date cruiser. “I’m starting to hear this song in my sleep.”  
  
Wufei came in from the kitchen, pan in hand, still dressed in his apron. His black hair was tied back in a tight ponytail, lest it fall into the food while he cooked. “At least you’re getting  _some_  culture.” He set the steaming pan between them on the low table, taking the easy chair facing the couch.  
  
“You can talk about culture when we’re not eating out of frying pans,” Heero replied, as both men bent over the food, utensils at the ready. They ate in relative silence, Heero chewing thoughtfully. The mushrooms did little to brighten the bland, stringy chicken.  
  
“We need more money,” Wufei stated, apparently as dissatisfied with the food as Heero. “This chicken is bordering on inedible.”  
  
Heero shrugged. “This month has been slow.” His eyes darted to the laptop perched on a rusting metal counter by the wall. “Must be a holiday for criminals.”  
  
“If a bounty doesn’t come in soon, we’re going to have to switch careers,” Wufei groused. “In fact, Sally sent me a salvage mission from L3 the other day, wanted to know if we were interested.”  
  
Heero’s stomach interjected with a gurgle and he took that to mean it was time to give up on the mushrooms-and-chicken fiasco. Wiping his hands on his jeans, he walked to the laptop and booted it, hopeful for some news. A job, no matter how small, as long as it was bounty work. The last thing he wanted to do was salvage.  
  
His inbox was empty. “What luck.”  
  
“I know you’re not interested in salvage, Yuy, but we don’t have many options,” Wufei continued. “If you haven’t noticed, Zero is due for a tune up, and at the moment, we don’t even have the credits for a car wash.”  
  
Heero sighed, his mood already sour despite his early morning meditation. Wufei was right. Zero was in bad shape– their small, decrepit cruiser was busted up on its best days, but their last mission had caused some damage to one of her thrusters that had to be repaired if they hoped to maintain speed in hyperspace. Until that was cleared up, they had to limit their scope to the region of space they could safely travel in without further damage to the engine– the planet of Sanq, the moon of Peacemillion, and the closest colony, L3.  
  
Anything else, and they’d have to take the hyperspace highway-- where they would undoubtedly be stopped at the first toll and deemed unfit for high-speed travel.  
  
It was quite a catch-22, Heero thought joylessly. No jobs until they had more money, and no more money until they had jobs.  
  
A staccato of electronic beeping woke Heero from his frustrated musing, and he turned hopeful eyes to his laptop screen. Wufei, too, leapt up from the couch, picking up an errant remote control to shut off the music player. “An incoming call?”  
  
Nodding, Heero entered the protocols to accept the data transfer. In a few moments, a window appeared in the center of the screen, revealing the face of a woman framed by thick twists of blonde hair.  
  
“Sally,” Heero said in greeting.  
  
The woman smiled, acknowledging both men. “Heero! It’s been a while.” Her smile widened. “Nice to see you again, too, Wufei.”  
  
Clearing her throat, she leaned back in what Heero recognized to be the chair at her office desk. Interest sparked in him, hopeful that her location indicated this was a call of business.  
  
“It’s been a bit of a wait, I know, but don’t worry, I secured a nice fat one for the two of you,” she beamed. At Wufei’s cross expression, she added, “and this time it isn’t salvage.”  
  
“Tell us about it,” Heero replied with barely reigned impatience.  
  
“Just a minute, I’m sending the specs to you two now.” Sally’s eyes focused on something slightly off-screen, the muted sound of typing crackling in the video feed’s audio. A few more taps, and Sally’s window shifted automatically to the right as a new window appeared alongside it, revealing a picture and a condensed block of text. “Got him?”  
  
“Affirmative.” Heero’s eyes were already scanning the information. Wufei peered at the attached photograph with a slight sneer.  
  
“A mugshot. An escaped convict?”  
  
“Sort of,” Sally mused. “His name is Renaldo DeFabricio, originally from L4. His rap sheet is long but pretty mundane, small-fry stuff, mostly. He’s been in and out of prison all over the universe and the earth sphere.”  
  
“The bounty is 5 million credits,” Heero read. “And the warrant is from the government. That’s quite a bill for a small-timer.”  
  
“Yeah, he’s seemed to have decided to move up in the world as of late,” Sally said with a shrug. “After his latest arrest, he escaped and hijacked a UESA freighter full of goodies– weapons and such. It’s all there in the specs.”  
  
Wufei frowned, squinting at the type, but he would need his glasses to read text this small, and Heero knew that his pride refused to let him wear them in front of Sally.  
  
Heero read aloud for Wufei’s benefit, smirking slightly that Wufei, of all people, would have this small vanity. “So, he’s taken refuge on Sanq.”  
  
“That’s right. It’s pretty cliche, if you ask me,” Sally sighed. “All the small-fries go where the pacifists limit the government’s military presence. You two are pretty lucky, actually, since no one goes out that way much anymore, not now that the real money’s out in the Diego Span and L2 cluster. It wasn’t even hard to secure your priority for this bounty.”  
  
“I wouldn’t call it luck, exactly,” Heero muttered. “This money is going to be gone as soon as we get our hands on it.”  
  
“I heard about the banged-up thruster from Wufei,” Sally replied, nodding sympathetically. “Look on the bright side: this one’s a piece of cake! Just a small fishie who jumped into a lake much too big for him.”  
  
Nodding, Heero moved to shut off the video feed– these calls weren’t cheap, after all. “Thanks, Sally,” he said appreciatively, though little of the emotion survived in his habitually flat voice.  
  
Sally winked at them. “You boys knew I’d come through for you in the end,” she said with a smile. The mirth in her tone told them she knew how frustrated they’d been for lack of work. “Wouldn’t be a very good manager if I didn’t, would I? Let me know how it goes.”  
  
“We will,” Heero promised, and disconnected the call.  
  
Wufei immediately left his side to retrieve his glasses, so he could read the mission specs as well. Heero took a good look at the mugshot Sally had provided them, memorizing features in the man’s face that would serve to identify him later.  
  
The blurb said he was thirty-six, but to Heero’s eyes he looked to be in at least his mid-forties, his hair scraggly and dirty brown, nearly reaching his shoulders and thinning over his temples, a fact made even more apparent by the slicked-back style he apparently preferred. His nose was crooked in a way that told Heero it had probably been broken multiple times. His mouth was a severe, limp little gash across his face. There was a distinguishing scar on his cheek, jagged and pink where it had healed, a little too deep to be covered with makeup, if indeed this man was smart enough to try to conceal his identity at all.  
  
Somehow, Heero guessed he wasn’t. After all, he had come to Sanq to try to disappear, a place so crisp and pristine that the occasional criminal who wound up there, lured by the appeal of its restriction of military presence, often found themselves sticking out like a sore thumb– a black sheep in a field of lily-white lambs. Even the shadows glowed brightly on Sanq.  
  
As Wufei returned, glasses now perched elegantly on the bridge of his nose, Heero left the cabin, clicking the remote control on his way out. Once again Canon in D flowed melodically through the room. He made his way to the cockpit and immediately contacted docking authorities on Sanq, offering his registration and license and requesting landing coordinates.  
  
Within the hour, the Wing Zero touched down on the smooth tarmac of the first available landing strip, and the bounty hunters Wufei Chang and Heero Yuy stepped out onto Sanq soil, itching to start their mission.  
  
* * *  
  
“Welcome, comrade. What’ll it be?”  
  
The man’s eyes, shadowed beneath a wide brimmed hat, darted quickly to the bartender at the colloquial moniker, but whatever had irked him at the name, he appeared to let it slide. He approached the counter and took a seat on a narrow stool, resting a long, lean arm on the bartop.  
  
“Get me a gin and tonic,” he muttered beneath his hat.  
  
“May I recommend the gin and sparkling tea instead, comrade?” The bartender suggested, his mouth a wide, cordial smile.  
  
Another glance from beneath the hat. “Sure, whatever.”  
  
While the bartender busied himself with mixing the drink, the man took a hooded look around the interior of the place. It was about as dumpy as it got in Sanq– chipped paint on the walls, tables and chairs that looked like they’d seen better days. They’d probably been donated to the owners as a charity. Yet even here the place stunk with the arrogance of assumed class. Everything from the “helpful” bartender to the affected name of the place (The Gilded Lion- someone certainly had a high opinion of themselves) was a direct assault on his senses.  
  
The restaurant was, thankfully, almost empty. Only one table in the corner of the room far from him was occupied: two men, a couple of young orientals, hunched over a pot of indiscriminate food, muttering to each other in low tones he couldn’t make out. They were dressed like outsiders, just like him, equally incongruous even against the sparse decor of the shabby pub. He guessed they were members of some syndicate or another. The L5 cluster disaster had produced a lot of slanty-eyed orphans, he recalled. Not the biggest surprise that most of them had ended up in the drug trade.  
  
He, too, had once been lured by the promise of lots of easy, fast cash. He had been younger and much more foolish then. He’d soon learned the money only came easy and fast because the employees never lasted long. He was lucky to have been caught by the feds instead of at the wrong end of a gun. And anyway, he was beyond that now. His hand drifted to the numbered key in his pocket, his thoughts with the storage unit it opened, and the stock of weapons he had there, worth a pretty fortune several times over. He’d already gotten a few substantial inquiries. Once he unloaded those weapons, he’d have more money than the fucking queen of Sanq herself, and then he’d ship off this shitstain planet and disappear.  
  
The bartender had turned and now stood stock-still before him. In his hands he held the man’s drink, frozen in its extension towards him, a surprised look on his face.  
  
The man squinted back at him, irked, wondering what the hell he was doing. God save him if he tried to give him any more goddamn  _help_. Then, he felt the thump of something cold and hard against the back of his head.  
  
“Renaldo DeFabricio,” someone said behind him, and Renaldo knew it to be one of the fucking orientals– he should’ve realized– from the table in the corner. “You’re under arrest.”  
  
In a flash, Renaldo dropped, kicking his own chair out from under him. As he fell, he swung his arm off the bartop and knocked the gun-toting arm high and away from him. His other fist flew forward to land with a satisfying smack deep in the man’s gut. The gun dropped to the floor with a clatter.  
  
“Wufei? What the hell–” the other man began, but Renaldo was already out the door before the sentence ended. He sprinted down the street, aware that the guy was already hot on his heels, and if his partner wasn’t yet, he would be recovering from the sucker punch pretty soon.  
  
Weaving through the busy street, past honking cars and confused pedestrians, Renaldo took every shortcut he had learned in his short time spent on the planet. Damn, this asshole was fast! Renaldo leapt a waist-high fence of someone’s backyard, but it didn’t even slow the guy down– he vaulted cleanly over it and kept coming for him.  
  
Gotta take him somewhere that’ll disorient him, Renaldo thought, and skidded around a street corner. His blood rushed in his ears to the beat of his racing heart. He had to think... the marketplace was down this way somewhere– that place was always packed and full of places to slip into and hide. It was definitely his best shot.  
  
Ahead, still distant but rapidly approaching, he could see the clustered carts and makeshift shops of the market. The street was crowded with people, as he’d hoped, filling the area with boisterous noise.  
  
The steps of the man were still thunderously loud behind him, but he couldn’t risk looking back. His lungs burned, his muscles screamed in his legs, his heart pounded so hard in his chest he thought it might shatter his ribcage, but he couldn’t stop, he had to keep running.  
  
Renaldo sprinted like the devil himself was chasing him, deep into the thrumming crowd of the marketplace. He shoved away basket-carrying women and men, deaf to their indignant shouts, his only thought that he couldn’t get caught, not  _now_  when he was so close to really being somebody.  
  
He overturned a fruit cart blocking him and swiftly cleared a low table laden with clay pots and dishes. Anyone unlucky enough to get in his way met the same fate. The market clamored with cries of surprise and interest. People crowded around and behind the two racing men to watch the chase unfold.  
  
Renaldo’s legs seared with pain. They would give out soon, cramp up or snap. He had to shake this guy! Desperate, he risked a glance behind him. There was no one there! Where had the bounty hunter gone? Had he really lost–  
  
Much too late, Renaldo noticed the enormous wood-and-cloth cart directly in his path, and though he dived to the floor in a valiant effort to avoid it, velocity hurled him directly into the structure. Thick wood pillars cracked and toppled around him. Something heavy and hard hit him in the back of the head, and his vision flooded black.  
  
Around the scene in the marketplace a small crowd had gathered, people rushing in from all sides to get a better look. It was difficult, at first, for Wufei to even make his way through, and he had to deal with a good amount of pushing and prodding from the onlookers as he forced a path toward the crumbled stall. Heero may have been perfectly fine and able to dash madly after DeFabricio, but that sucker punch to Wufei’s gut had taken all the wind out of him and he had only now caught up. He held his arm gingerly around his stomach, and grumbled sourly to himself that the bastard might have bruised a rib. Damn, he had a hell of a punch.  
  
At the site of the takedown, the crowd had cleared slightly, perhaps afraid to get too close when criminals and guns were involved. Wufei, having no such concerns, strode directly up to the heap of broken wood and crumpled cloth. Lying in the center of the destruction, his hands pulled sharply behind his back, was DeFabricio, face-down courtesy of a knee pressing heavily on the back of his head. Heero held his wrists tightly with one hand, the other held a gun to the man’s neck.  
  
Wufei smirked. “I’m a little surprised he’s even conscious. Showing a little restraint?”  
  
Heero scowled and dug his knee harder into the back of DeFabricio’s skull, eliciting a muffled whimper from the man. “He wasn’t before you got here.”  
  
Wufei pulled out his handcuffs, locking them solidly over the man’s wrists. DeFabricio thrashed his legs, but Heero’s hold allowed him little more.  
  
“Let’s just get this guy down to the police station and get the cash.” Wufei shook his head. “Did you know they don’t allow smoking on the street in Sanq? I’ve got to get the hell off this planet.”  
  
Together, they hauled the defeated man to his feet, dragging him sharply away from the market and toward Central Booking. DeFabricio, his hair ragged and wild around his face, his limp mouth curled in a grimace, snarled at them as they hustled him along.  
  
“Bounty hunter bastards! Dogs of the solar system! You’re scum, the lowest dregs of the seediest, filthiest–”  
  
“Stop it,” Heero growled, shooting a threatening glare at the captive man. “You’re making me blush.”  
  
* * *  
  
Wufei took a long, relaxed drag of his cigarette, his arms folded comfortably behind his head. Ignoring the chatter of the mechanics below him, he stretched out on Zero’s hood beneath the warm artificial sun. Smoking zoning laws be damned, he thought, puffing merrily, we’ll be off this hellhole by the afternoon, brand new thrusters and all.  
  
His tiny portable comm link buzzed beside him, and, squinting in the glare, he fumbled for the button to activate the video feed. Heero’s scowling face greeted him.  
  
“You put steaks on this list?” Heero’s tinny voice grumbled through the speakers. “We can’t afford that, I don’t care if we just made a bounty.”  
  
Wufei snorted. “Suit yourself. I thought you might be sick of chicken.”  
  
“We’ll get ground beef instead.”  
  
“You don’t have any appreciation for gourmet cooking, Heero.”  
  
“I’d hardly call the stuff you force me to eat ‘gourmet’, Wufei,” Heero replied flatly.  
  
“First I’ve heard you complain about it,” Wufei muttered. “Hey, Heero, any ideas on where to head next?”  
  
Heero gave a noncommittal twitch of his eyebrows. “I was thinking we’d go where the fish are biting. Diego’s pretty far, but the L2 cluster is only a couple of days on the highway.”  
  
“Yeah,” Wufei breathed behind another drag. “Sounds like a plan.”  
  
“How are the repairs coming along?”  
  
“Couple of hours, tops, so when you’re finished sightseeing, hurry back with the groceries.”  
  
“Roger,” Heero nodded, then swiftly disconnected.  
  
Wufei peered up into the faint blue sky and outward to the sheen of barely visible stars beyond. They called to him, the hollow siren song of space. Somewhere out among the countless stars was his destiny, his death, and whatever followed.  
  
But for now, all that he looked forward to was the next bounty and the promise of something other than chicken for dinner.


	2. Stray Dog Strut

_Chapter Two: Stray Dog Strut_

 

“I’ve got a doozy for you this time, boys!”

Sally’s bright voice rang out from Heero’s laptop speakers. She was not a dainty woman, certainly as coarse as they were, but her voice still carried the light, innocent lilt of a young girl’s. It struck Heero as slightly unnerving. He knew there must be some great tragedy, some sorrow never disclosed in her past. The only people who involved themselves with bounty hunting were those who had nothing and no one else in the galaxy left for them. Absently he found himself wishing she had the rough old voice of a space matron, weathered by smoke or drink or some other human vice. Nevertheless, he joined Wufei at the couch, where his computer glowed cheerfully from its tabletop perch.

“You know, you two are really lucky to have a manager like me,” Sally continued, her eyebrows shooting upward with mock seriousness. “I’ll have you know this is the hottest case on the books right now, and I’ve managed to secure you two _first priority_.” She enunciated the words with the reverence they deserved. “There isn’t a bounty hunter in the solar system who doesn’t want this job!”

Wufei’s eyes gleamed with rising curiosity– he was an easy sell. Heero, ever skeptical, maintained his demeanor of indifference.

“Who’s the bounty?” He ran through a list of the biggest bounties and the most famous criminals he knew. For it to be any of those, there would have to be new information on their whereabouts. Heero was sure he’d have heard about it already.

“I’m sending the information,” Sally replied. Then, like a poker player revealing her winning hand, she added, “but I’m sure you boys have heard all about the Sebring-Cooper heist by now.”

Now Heero joined Wufei in undisguised interest. “The medical heist? That guy stole over 120 million in top-of-the-line drugs. That’s our bounty?”

“The very same! Only this time we have a name and a face to go with the guy.”

Heero skimmed the report that had appeared on his laptop screen. He placed the man staring back at him at around his age, though the dark brown bangs that fell heavily into his eyes made him seem younger, almost childish. Either that, or it was the ridiculous grin he wore, laughably out of place considering Heero was viewing the man’s mugshot.

He read the name off the list of information: “Duo Maxwell.”

Heero and Wufei peered closer to take in the bounty’s appearance, the same tiny sneer curling across their faces.

“ _This_ is the man who pulled off the heist?” Wufei said with bare skepticism.

Sally shrugged. “Does it matter? He’s got quite a few outstanding warrants besides this bounty– armed robbery and the like. Besides, Sebring-Cooper certainly believes he did it, and it seems they’re willing to put their money where their mouth is.”

“I’ll say,” Heero muttered. “30 million credits. That would keep us fed for a good while.”

“They say he’s hiding out in the L2 cluster, possibly in the salvage field of Quadrant X9335.”

Wufei snorted. “How cliche. Either he’s cocky or he’s an idiot.”

“Let’s hope for a little bit of both,” Sally replied in her girlish lilt. “That money would do well for all of us!”

“Accepted.” Heero’s reply was rather belated; Wufei was already off the couch and heading to the cockpit for the necessary regulatory procedures. Sally only shook her head and smiled fondly at Heero from her computer window, giving him a cheerful little wave goodbye.

“Let me know how it goes!” A moment later the call was severed and the rap sheet of Duo Maxwell filled the screen.

Wufei’s muffled voice and the answering mumble of the L2 Docking Authorities floated in from the cockpit. Heero leaned back into the itchy couch cushions. He didn’t want to let his mind linger on the possibilities 30 million credits would afford them, though he already had a few vaguely-formed plans for the money.

A speeder would be a great addition to their enterprise, well worth the cost, he reasoned. A small, one-person speeder ship would release them from the bureaucratic hassle of getting docking permission– anything small enough to fit in Zero’s dock would certainly slide well under the size restrictions for Required Docking Permittance. With one of those they could strategize to a much greater extent, one of them taking the speeder while the other remained in Zero and provided a tactical role. And not to mention the drastic reduction of hand-to-hand encounters. As satisfying as knocking Renaldo DeFabricio into the ground had been, less punches to the chest and scrapes and bruises would certainly be a good thing.

Wufei, evidently finished with the docking authorities, strode back into the living room and regarded Heero evenly.

“Any plans for the money?” he asked, with a deliberate effort of nonchalance, as if he suspected the question might irritate Heero.

“How does a speeder sound to you?”

Wufei visibly relaxed; Heero had been letting his mind wander as well. “I was thinking something along those lines. A good speeder would cost around 18 million, maybe a little less if we looked in the right places. That leaves us with a decent amount of cash. We could take some low-priority jobs for a while and relax.”

“You’re really preoccupied with relaxation lately,” Heero muttered. Wufei merely arched his eyebrow and strode out of the room.

Irritated by the rough fiber of the couch, Heero leaned forward to scrutinize the bounty file. The stupid smile on Duo Maxwell’s face was irritating him as well; no one with 30 million resting on his head had the right to look that pleased with himself. He was a dead man walking, the least he could do was have the proper attitude about it, even if the theft he had pulled off was front page news galaxy-wide.

The Sebring-Cooper heist had generated a lot of interest from the press because it was so unusual, the first large-scale robbery of its kind as far as Heero could remember. Pharmaceuticals generated a lot of revenue, it was true, and Sebring-Cooper was the largest and most successful of the medical conglomerates, but there simply wasn’t enough of a black-market demand for medical supplies to warrant the theft of 120 million credits worth of prescription drugs.

Heero was aware, with the kind of murky recollection that came from deep in his subconscious, that there was an underground market for medicine, quite a large one, but it was all syndicate run and operated. They made all the drugs they sold on the black market.

There would be no benefit for a mob boss to pay for stolen (and traceable) drugs when they were already quite comfortable making them on their own. What did Duo Maxwell hope to gain by stealing from a pharmaceutical company?

Heero didn’t like it– it reeked of either foolishness or reckless heroics. Was Maxwell trying to play Robin Hood to the downtrodden masses? He would only get himself arrested, or worse.

“Ready to go?” Wufei appeared in the room again, now sporting a gun and a few canisters of ammo, a cigarette danging from his lip. He crossed to the cockpit entrance and paused, waiting for Heero’s response before he headed inside to turn Zero toward L2 and the nearby salvage field.

“Ready,” Heero replied, his eyes resting back on that strange face beaming from his computer screen. He reminded himself not to let the lure of 30 million creds get his hopes up– they had to catch the guy first.

Duo Maxwell grinned back at him, as if challenging him to go ahead and try.

***

The L2 Salvage Field was the name given to the couple hundred miles of open space located directly south of the Greater L2 Colony Cluster. A government-mandated magnetic current, generated and marked off by an enormous gleaming fence, drew in surrounding mechanical debris and colony detritus and held it securely in stasis within the field boundaries.

The area had been declared salvage space after the Universal War, when the remaining space mines, broken or abandoned mobile suits, and other mechanical casualties left floating in the vastness of space proved a significant danger to space travelers. Areas of salvage provided a safe place to dump these parts and pieces in the war’s wake. In addition, the relatively prosperous salvaging business was created, as former instruments of war became useful anew by the sum of their parts.

Heero watched a salvage station pass on their right, several large, weathered ships docked at its pier. Ahead, a great fence of finely-interlocked mesh stretched for miles above and below them, crackling and thrumming with the electricity generating the magnetic current. Beyond that was the L2 field itself. A checkpoint entryway stood between, two uniformed guards looking bored as they waved them forward.

It was surprising to Heero that neither guard stopped them to check their authorization, never mind that they had completed all the necessary arrangements to obtain entrance to the field.

Wufei also appeared taken aback by the guards’ disinterest. “No wonder criminals love to come here,” he muttered.

They passed through the gate and into a small, enclosed entryway, built of the same mesh as the fence, constellated with glowing signs proclaiming a host of dangers in several languages.

“ _WARNING: ACTIVE MINES. AUTHORIZED ENTRY ONLY_.”

“大型ゴミにご注意!!”

“ _ATTENTION! RESPECTEZ LA LIMITE DE VITESSE: 40 KM/H!_ ”

Wufei, already turning on the radar system, began scanning the area for objects. “This is going to be tricky,” he said. “Every piece of metal floating in the Field is going to show up on the radar.”

“Can we set it to objects emitting an electrical charge to distinguish ships from scrap?”

“We can,” Wufei replied, fiddling with the screen’s buttons. “But the fence is going to cause interference. We’ll have to keep a good distance from it to get any readings.”

“Shit. If the bounty figures that out, you can guarantee he’ll be hiding out around the perimeter.”

Wufei pursed his lips, but continued setting the radar’s parameters.

Heero reached to flip the switch that activated Zero’s anti-magnetic field. It was lucky that the ship had been outfitted for salvage work when he had gotten hold of it, otherwise they would have had to rent one of the dilapidated old tankers floating in the salvage bay outside. A regular ship would use three times the fuel just to maintain speed in the Field.

The fenced entryway ended directly ahead, ungated. Beyond that, the L2 Salvage Field greeted them, an endless stretch of space and floating scrap that twinkled in what light reached this place.

Zero purred as it rolled gracefully into the Field. The hot thrum of magnetic current buzzed around them, like low rolling thunder. A grey sheet of metal drifted past the cockpit window, a busted windowpane revealing it to have once been part of a ship. On the right there was a wheel, a part of a wing; on the left, the broken husk of a satellite dish. Only the quiet pitter patter of adrift nuts and bolts bouncing off Zero’s hull interrupted the steady magnetic hum.

It was almost beautiful, Heero thought. The way a graveyard was beautiful. There was beauty in the serene drift of metal in eternal repose.

The thrum was annoying Wufei, it seemed. His brows knitted together and he glanced around the cockpit for the remote control. “Just ignore it,” Heero said, “we’ve got to start looking for this bounty.”

“Left the remote in the living room anyway,” Wufei muttered. “All right, the radar is making a fifty-mile sweep.”

They watched the blinking radar screen, the green sweeping line indicating its focus. Immediately, several tiny shapes appeared, indicating objects in range that were emitting any electrical current.

“Most likely salvage crews,” Heero noted. “I’ll get on radio and see if these guys know anything.”

He reached forward to the radio equipment, installed delicately alongside the dashboard video system, and fiddled with the tuner, flying through frequencies until he hit a hiccup in the static. “Hello?”

There was a long pause and the sound of someone fiddling with the radio equipment through the receiver. Then, a gruff voice answered. “Yeah?”

Beside him, Wufei pursed his lips at the man’s rough tone, but Heero didn’t mind. He was never one for social grace, anyway. “Hello. This is the ship Wing Zero, my name is Heero Yuy.”

“Howard.” The man didn’t offer a last name. “With the ship Sweeper.”

“Howard, do you work here regularly? Would you know the other ships here well?”

“Now look here,” said the voice on the other line. “I don’t play twenty questions with no strangers. What’s the matter? Some vet giving you newcomers a hard time?”

That’s right; Zero by all appearances was a salvage vessel. This guy thought they were a new enterprise to the area. Heero wondered if he should tell him their real reason for visiting the Field that day, but though salvagers and bounty hunters were on about the same low rung of the occupational ladder, that was no reason for this man to trust him any more for it. At least with a fellow salvager, he might divulge a little information.

“We’re looking for a guy, young, long brown hair all the way down his back,” Heero said. And a stupid smile, too, he added mentally, but restrained himself before he went editorializing to the salvage captain.

“Hmm...” Howard made a pensive sound, giving the description a bit of thought. “None of the vets look like that, we’re all over the hill to say the least. And I haven’t seen any newcomers besides the two of you around lately.” He paused, then added, “why? He cheat you at cards or something?”

“Something like that,” Heero replied, already noting the other ships appearing on the radar. Maybe one of them would have something useful to tell them. He severed the call with Howard after a gruff word of thanks, though what exactly he was thankful for was unclear. For completely wasting their time, maybe.

It quickly became apparent that none of the other salvage captains were going to be of any more help than Howard. They all told him the same thing: no man matching that description had been seen in the area. Heero wished he at least had a description of the criminal’s ship, as he wasn’t sure these men even saw each other as often as they saw each other’s vehicles. It was all very frustrating. Zero’s cabin was angrily silent with the irritated fuming of both its occupants, building as each ship was crossed off as useless.

A few hours of hopeless searching made one thing clear: it wasn’t going to be easy to find Duo Maxwell. Heero had the sinking suspicion that the bounty had been smart enough to stick to the perimeter, which meant they would probably be seeing nothing but the L2 Field for the next week while they made a full patrol around the edge. Which meant a week of piloting in shifts while one of them ate or slept, as the autopilot was certainly not sophisticated enough to maneuver around all the floating debris. The prospect was not enjoyable.

Still, they took an exhaustive survey of the field, until every last ship that appeared on their radar proved unhelpful. At the last, Wufei shut the system off with an angry growl.

“Do you want to try scanning the area for large bodies?” Heero offered. “It’ll detect everything in sight bigger than a car but it’s better than nothing.”

“He’s probably staked along the perimeter,” Wufei grumbled, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “Little smart-ass.”

Heero snorted. “A thorough search along the fence will take a couple of days. Hope you don’t feel like sleeping tonight.”

“Damn it, there has to be a better way to do this. We’ve got to think like this guy does. Where’s your best chance of hiding in a place like this?”

They peered out into the Field for a while, considering the options. Errant scrap metal floated past them, offering little by way of an answer.

“I would definitely take the perimeter,” Heero said finally. “He’s hiding out in a scrap heap, so he already knows or suspects there’s a bounty on his head. He would probably assume they’d use radar to search for him first, so it would be natural to hide along the fence and prevent getting caught so easily.”

“Okay, so he’s at the fence. That’s all but a given at this point.”

Heero nodded. “So the question is, how do you hide?”

Wufei leaned back in his seat, contemplating this. “The fence glows, so any ship is going to look pretty obvious.”

“If my goal was not to be seen, I would need some kind of camouflage.”

“So he hides where the scrap metal has pooled? How would that work? This stuff just drifts around freely.”

“Right,” Heero replied, a tiny smirk forming at the corners of his mouth. An idea was beginning to take shape in his mind. “I would have to do something to keep the metal from drifting away. Considering I am probably in a ship fitted for salvage, the easiest option would be to maintain a weak magnetic current around my ship.”

Wing Zero still carried this auxiliary option from its days as a salvage vehicle. It sported two strips of paneling on either side that, if activated, released a magnetic current in an adjustable radius around the ship. The result was an unartful but potentially very lucrative trawl of small, random parts that were difficult to haul in bulk otherwise. If it was weak enough, it wouldn’t need very much fuel to provide a good cover for a criminal on the run.

Wufei’s eyes narrowed as Heero spoke. “That would be a good idea, wouldn’t it? And the perimeter’s current is anti-magnetic. A sweep for magnetic current wouldn’t get any interference.”

He quickly began fiddling with the controls of Wing’s radar system. The screen flashed, then small shapes took form. Most of those came from ships that they had already investigated. But, Heero hoped, maybe not all.

“Here’s something,” Wufei said, pointing at a large murky dot on the screen. “It’s right at the fence, and it’s big enough to be a ship for sure.”

“How far?”

“Thirty miles or so.”

“Let’s go,” Heero said, and he pushed Wing forward into the Field.

They travelled in silence, both focused on the mission at hand. Heero idly wondered if their bounty would put up a fight. He thought back to Duo Maxwell’s mugshot, that inexplicable smile and inane hair. He didn’t have the imbalanced air of a true maniac, but who the hell steals millions of dollars’ worth of traceable drugs in the first place? Anyone crazy enough to do that might be crazy enough to start a firefight in a salvage junkyard.

Five miles away, Heero killed the momentum. Zero’s engine quieted to a predatory hum as they glided forward toward their target. The dot on the radar screen inched closer.

The Field didn’t look particularly different here than elsewhere in its expanse, though the immense electric fence loomed close by on their left. Sheets of scrap metal drifted toward it, only to bounce gently off the anti-magnetic current’s invisible wall, careening gently away back into space.

The radar was indicating they were close enough to their target that they should be able to see it by now. Heero peered out into space. He could clearly see a headless, armless mobile suit floating serenely a hundred feet or so in front of them, and a few large pieces of a salvage ship on the right. But nothing that immediately seemed out of place. A metal antenna of some kind drifted past Wing, headed obliviously for the fence.

Heero’s brows knit together in frustration. He had hoped this was the secret to saving themselves the trouble of a complete search, but it was looking like his brilliant idea was actually just a waste of time.

Wufei joined Heero in a scowl, tracking the antenna’s journey in distraction. It wobbled slightly as the anti-magnetic field halted its trajectory, eventually sending it off in the opposite direction, where it would travel mindlessly until it hit the fence on the other side, and so on for eternity.

Only, instead of drifting off into empty space, it bounced from the fence and swerved strangely to the side, as if being pulled away from its natural course.

“You see that?” Wufei said.

“Yeah,” Heero replied, eyes riveted to the antenna. It travelled in its strange new path for a couple hundred feet or so, before coming oddly to rest. There, Heero saw, the salvage scrap was thick, moving as slowly as anywhere else in the Field, but... it wasn’t drifting away. Some pieces, like the remains of the mobile suit, perhaps too large to be pulled in, passed right by. To anyone not looking very hard, it wouldn’t seem like anything was out of the ordinary. But it was exactly what they had been looking for.

“That’s it,” Wufei said. “Think there’s a ship in the middle of that?”

“It has to be.” Was it Duo Maxwell, though?

“Let’s go,” Wufei replied. “Slowly.”

Heero nodded and nudged Wing forward toward the thick salvage drift. As camouflage, it worked remarkably well. He couldn’t make anything out beneath the swirling wheels and rudders and strips of metal. They were two hundred feet away. Now one hundred, and still nothing. Fifty.

Something stirred beneath the scrap. Then, green lights shot on, revealing an elegant little speeder, painted a murky jet black.

“There it is!” Heero growled, throwing Wing’s thrusters on, but the little ship was already shooting up and away, a tail of metal pulled in its wake. As it flashed overhead, Heero could make out a giant mural of the grim reaper painted on the underside of the ship, scythe clutched ominously in its hands. All that mattered right now, though, was that it didn’t get away.

“Shit,” Wufei cursed, reaching around to fasten the buckles on his seat. He braced his hands on the secondary weapon controls, and Heero knew that if he saw the opportunity to take the bounty down, Wufei would shoot without hesitation, just like he would.

Heero pulled heavily back on the ship’s joystick and Wing Zero lurched upward after the speeder. A hailstorm of nuts and bolts pelted the hull of the ship, propelled forward by the magnetic current. Heero gritted his teeth through the cacophony and gunned the engine.

Wing was large and difficult to maneuver through the ocean of scrap metal. It was no match for the lithe little speeder ship in a chase. Their best bet was to catch up quickly and open fire before the speeder lost them. The longer it took, the lesser their chances to catch this bounty.

Wing Zero’s engined roared beneath them. The speeder swerved easily around a piece of a ship’s hull that Heero barely avoided. It banked to the left, and Heero followed suit, grunting against Wing’s resistance to shift direction. They careened past a blurry stream of scrap, the larger pieces of which rattled clanging off Zero’s sides.

The speeder banked sharply, headed for the perimeter, and they saw a chance to take it down.

“Now!” Heero growled, but even as he spoke, Wufei was throwing open the safeties and squeezing hard on the triggers in his hands. A dazzling arc of laser heat flew outward like bullets from their ship.

The speeder dropped instantly downward, twirling wildly, as the space it occupied moments before erupted in fire.

“What the hell?” Wufei swore.

Heero belatedly remembered the ‘Active Mines’ warning at the entrance to the Salvage Field. Shit. As if the danger of a crash with a mobile suit or something wasn’t enough. Worse still, he saw the ship was speeding away, untouched. Heero grunted and rushed after.

Suddenly, the console on Wing’s dashboard came to life with a crackle of static, and the smirking face of Duo Maxwell filled the screen.

“Afternoon, guys,” he said jovially. “I gotta say, I’ve gotten some rotten welcomes in my time, but that little fireworks show back there probably takes the cake.”

Wufei’s eyes were wider than saucers, and he swore in a language Heero couldn’t immediately identify.

“How did you get this frequency?” Heero growled at the console in disbelief.

“Come on, I could hack the private line to the queen of Sanq before you two would ever catch me,” he replied with an infuriating laugh. “Let me guess. They put a bounty on my head and you two are here to collect?”

Heero didn’t respond, watching the speeder veering around obstacles ahead of them. This was obviously meant as a distraction, disturbing though it was that Duo Maxwell had hacked into their comm line so easily. It seemed they had underestimated him. He was pretty sure now, at least, that the man was completely out of his mind.

“I see, the strong and silent types, huh? And here I was, hoping we could all work this out like grownups.”

They sped through a mess of mobile suit parts, the grinning face of Duo Maxwell taunting them from their console. Heero chased the speeder through the maze of metal, refusing to lose it among the scrap. They burst into a pocket of open space for a moment, and Wufei immediately opened fire again. Duo Maxwell swerved safely out of the arc. Dammit, he was _fast!_

“Well, boys, I guess if you’re not going to play nice, I won’t either!” With that, the console winked out into static and was dark again.

“Who the fuck does this guy think he is?” Wufei roared, slamming one hand on the dashboard. “How did he maneuver his ship and hack our comm at the same time?”

Heero shook his head. He was equally in disbelief as Wufei, but there was no time to worry about it now. They were going to lose him if they didn’t manage to land a hit and fast.

The speeder dipped into a another thick pocket of salvage, and Wing roared after it. Heero barely bothered to avoid any obstacles now, letting them bounce off the hull rather than lose any ground to Maxwell. The comet’s tail of parts and scrap obscured his ship almost completely, and Heero feared that when it cleared, they would find Maxwell had gotten away.

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Wufei preparing to fire again. “The next break we get, that’s it,” he hissed. “I’m shooting until he goes down.”

Heero could make Duo out through the thick swirling sea of metal, maybe a couple thousand feet in front of them. If they shot from this distance, maybe they could get him. ‘Work it out like grownups,’ Maxwell? They would blow him into oblivion.

Suddenly, the speeder rocketed upwards and rolled upside down, speeding straight for them like a jet-black missile.

What the hell? Was the idiot suicidal? He’d kill them both if he crashed into them. Heero pulled downward on the joystick with all his power, but they were going too fast and Wing was too large. They were going to collide.

Maxwell’s ship veered sharply at the last minute and whizzed by overhead, the maddening grin of the grim reaper filling Heero’s vision as it passed.

All too late, he saw Maxwell’s plan. Wing was bombarded with the accumulated scrap metal pulled along in Maxwell’s wake. Heero finally managed to turn the ship away from the onslaught, but they were rocked by something that struck them with a deafening explosion.

“We’re hit, I think it’s a mine,” Heero hissed, struggling with the joystick as Wing Zero rolled with the impact. For a moment, they tumbled helplessly out of control, the wave of metal mercilessly pounding the ship. Then, they smashed into the fence, skidding along the perimeter with a deafening scrape until finally coming to a stop.

When Heero had finally gotten his bearings, Duo Maxwell was long gone.

The dashboard console’s alarm flashed that Zero’s left wing had been significantly damaged by the blast. They would need to be towed out of the Salvage Field and repaired and without even a bounty to show for it.

“God dammit!” Heero muttered, furious. He threw off his harness and stormed out of the cockpit to go make the call, leaving Wufei cursing up a storm in a foreign language.

Heero had the feeling that no amount of meditation would cure the mood he was in. The entire time they waited for the towing ship to arrive, he couldn’t get the image of that smirking face out of his mind.

Duo Maxwell the idiot, he decided, was going to pay.


	3. American Money

_Chapter Three: American Money_

 

“Got yourself into a little bit of a firefight back there, eh, Duo?” Howard’s scratchy voice filtered through Deathscythe’s cockpit. On the console screen, he peered out behind black sunglasses, his white hair wild around his head.

Duo shrugged and shot his friend a nonchalant grin. “Nothing I couldn’t handle, old man.”

“You ought to watch out for yourself a little more, _kid_ ,” Howard shot back. “You keep maneuvering yourself into spots like that and you're luck's liable to run out.”

“Luck's got nothing to do with it.” Duo leaned back in the pilot seat, hands behind his head. “I'm the goddamn best pilot in the galaxy. A couple of cowboys hungry for their next bounty don't scare me. I mean, did you see the hunk of junk they were trying to chase me with?”

“Sure did,” Howard replied with a laugh. “Those guys couldn't catch a cold in a cruiser that old and beat up. By the way, how's 'Scythe doing?”

“There's a little heat damage to the right wing, but I can wait to get it fixed until, uh, things cool down.”

“Yeah, about that...” Howard straightened and removed his glasses, a rare sight, to peer at Duo through the console screen. “You in some kind of trouble, Duo?”

“Nothing I can't handle,” Duo repeated.

“Hey, if you don't want to tell me, I can't force you,” Howard said, “but if you need any help, you know me and the guys have your back. If you need a place to lay low for a while or a place to stash Deathscythe--”

“Jeez, Howard, I said I have it under control!” Duo shot back. It was a little embarrassing to have someone acting so worried about him. “I'll be fine.”

Howard leveled him with a glare, but finally he seemed to accept that Duo was too damn proud to admit if he needed a hand. “All right, kid,” he sighed.

“You're turning into a sap in your old age, you know that, Howard?”

“I ain't no sap!” Howard grumbled, but he shrugged in resignation. “Damn stubborn kid. Look, the offer stands. You just let me know if you need anything.”

“ _Okay_ , sheesh.”

“Take care of yourself, Duo.”

“Yeah, yeah, you too,” Duo said. He caught a second of Howard putting those ubiquitous sunglasses back on before he cut the line to black. Duo leaned back in his seat with a heavy sigh, feeling a little bit of the flush Howard's concern for him had brought out in his cheeks begin to recede.

Duo hadn't been with the Sweepers for even a year, and he didn’t think he deserved this much worry on their parts. He knew the group of roughened old salvage men were fond of him, but he couldn't let them knowingly harbor a criminal, now matter how much they happened to like that criminal. He had seen the tattoos Howard tended to keep hidden under those awful printed shirts he loved; he knew they came from one of the many prison colonies dotting the galaxy. And Howard definitely wasn't the only Sweeper who had done time. Even if he could manage to swallow his own pride, Duo would turn himself in at the nearest Preventer's HQ before he let these men, who had managed to pick themselves up off the ground and make something respectable out of nothing, throw that all away for him.

Now that he had been tracked all the way to the L2 Salvage Field, he knew it wasn't safe to stick around any longer. Duo, however, was no fool. He’d known that the minute he had booked it out of that Sebring-Cooper production facility that the conglomerate would throw down a heavy sum for the first person who managed to retrieve their pharmaceuticals safely. He also suspected that the safety of one Duo Maxwell being retrieved into custody was not quite as important on Sebring-Cooper's list of priorities. So he had started putting his plans into motion even as Deathscythe was speeding away from the scene of the crime. Only a few finishing touches were left.

Duo quickly punched a comm link sequence into his console. A slim, pretty girl with an avant-garde fringe of bangs shadowing her forehead answered.

“Duo!” She cried. He felt his mood immediately lighten at her enthusiasm.

“Hilde, you cut your hair?”

Hilde beamed, turning her head so Duo could see the sides. Wow, it was short.

“It was just one of those things. Do you like it?”

“Yeah, looks great.”

“Thanks!” Hilde leaned her head forward on her hands. “I have good news for you.”

Duo grinned widely. “I knew you could do it, Hil.”

“It wasn't easy, you know,” she said, but she made no effort to conceal the pride in her voice. “I lost a couple nights of sleep screwing with the chemical compositions on those drugs. You could run 'em through a damn electron microscope now, though, and you'd never know where they came from!”

Having the drugs be untraceable was the key. Sebring-Cooper couldn't get them back if they didn't have their copyright markers in the chemical makeup. Even if they sued for them, they wouldn't have a case to speak of.

“We took them to the hospital last night. Told them it was an anonymous donation, like you said. You know they're going to test them to hell and back to make sure we didn’t poison them or anything, so it's gonna be a while before they go to any use, but it's a start.”

“Yeah,” Duo said. It was a shame that they couldn't help right away, but it was out of their hands now. “I'll never be able to thank you enough for this, Hilde.”

“Stop it,” she said, putting up a hand. Her smile faded suddenly and she shook her head. “All those kids, Duo. They were so sick. And you could just see it in the doctors' eyes how grateful they were... they had nothing at the hospital for them. No medicine, nothing. They had the kids two or three to a room when they should've been in quarantine, no damn space for 'em all. It's...” She stopped for a minute and looked away while she collected herself.

“I would murder those bastards with my bare hands if I could,” she said finally, voice almost a whisper. “Where were the goddamn Preventers, the politicians?”

“In Sebring-Cooper's back pocket,” Duo muttered.

“It's like the war ripped all the goodness out of the universe,” she continued. “Ain't no justice left. We have to make it ourselves. Those kids were going to die, Duo, if you hadn't done something. You don't have to thank me for shit. It wasn't a choice for either of us.”

Duo nodded. “I know.”

“Listen,” she said, wiping her eyes fast with the back of her hand. “I've been listening in here and there, and there's a big fat bounty on your head, Duo. Dead or alive.”

“Yeah, I know,” he replied. “I had a couple of cowboys chase me around the Salvage Field already. I shook them off, though.”

“Oh, Duo!” Hilde said, real anxiety in her eyes. “I'm so worried about you! What are you gonna do?”

“I'll be all right, Hilde, I have a plan.”

“Asshole, you better not be thinking about turning yourself in!”

And risk exposing her to prison herself for aiding and abetting? “Nah, I'm not planning to martyr myself just yet. I'm just going to have talk with Mr. Sebring and see if he won't say he's sorry for what he's done.”

Hilde's eyes went wide. “How'd you get his protocol info? Jeez.” She sighed, shaking her head. “I really don't know how you do it, Duo. It's amazing.”

“Stop it, Hil, you're gonna make me blush.” he replied with deliberate nonchalance.

Her bottom lip suddenly trembled. “Oh, Duo, please be careful!” She looked dangerously close to crying again.

“Hey, hey, I'll be fine,” he said quickly, sounding like a broken record even to himself. How many people was he going to have to reassure today? Hell, he certainly didn’t feel as confident as he sounded.

“Promise me you won't die, asshole.”

“I promise I won't die, asshole,” he said, his smile lopsided.

She didn't laugh, but at least she didn't start crying again. “Thanks.”

“Bye, Hilde.”

“Bye, Duo,” she said softly, and he shut off the link rather reluctantly.

Somewhere along the line, he’d really screwed things up. How had he managed to bring so many people down with him? The only thing being friends with a thief like him would bring Hilde and the Sweepers was a whole lot of misery. Duo sighed and ran his hands through his bangs. When this was all over, he was going to have to disappear. His friends deserved better than to go to jail or worse for him. They would be pissed off at him, sure, and probably a little hurt, but what was the alternative? Watch as everyone he cared about took the fall for him? Some friend he made.

“Shit,” Duo muttered. “Where's that goddamn protocol?”

He pushed his morose thoughts to the back of his mind and booted up his comm's operating system. Immediately, the neat little line of coding prompt that he had written for himself appeared, waiting for his input. He typed in his password and the coded command sequence that booted up the program he'd prepared for this occasion. From the massive collection of files that sprang up, he selected one, a simple text file that contained the coordinates of Sebring-Cooper's executive satellite communication linkup. Duo typed out the numbers on his screen.

The link rang once, twice, then flashed to life and displayed the confused face of a man of middle age, though he sported hair obviously dyed to mask this fact. Dressed in an expensive suit, seated in a gaudily opulent office, it was obvious he was extremely wealthy. Duo could see a couple of paintings hanging on the walls behind him that looked like they were worth more money than his ship.

“Winston Sebring, ain't that right?”

“Who are you?” The man growled, fiddling with the buttons on his comm feed. It wouldn't do him any good; Duo had long ago hacked Sebring's comm so that it couldn't be turned off without his prompting.

“Aw, I'm a little disappointed you don't recognize me,” Duo said, giving the man a wide, toothy grin. “Especially considering you've put a hefty bounty on my head.”

“Duo Maxwell?” Comprehension seemed to dawn on the man. His confusion evaporated into anger in a flash. “How did you get this number?”

“Now, Winston—can I call you that?-- let's not get hung up on trivial details.” Duo leaned forward to eye the man up and down.

Sebring's steely blue eyes narrowed to slits. “If you're trying to threaten me, I'm afraid you'll find me rather difficult to intimidate. A lowlife like you doesn't scare me.”

“Now, Winston, buddy, why would I want to do a thing like that?” Duo grinned across the video feed at his captive audience. “I just want to have a little chat with you.”

Sebring sneered. It was a look of utter contempt, something Duo was used to receiving from people of Sebring's status. Always underestimating him.

“Now, I'm not sure if you know this,” Duo continued, unfazed, “but I originally hail from L2. Little part of town called the Burrow, maybe you've heard of it?”

He paused, but Sebring didn't respond.

“Well, anyway, suffice to say it ain't the best place to grow up. Kind of rough and tumble, you know. In fact, I grew up in an orphanage, can you believe it? One of those 'plague orphans' you always hear about.

“You know about the L2 plague, right, Winston? I mean, your pharmaceutical company just released a vaccine for its most recent iteration. About 20 years too late for my folks and the rest of the L2 riffraff, but they wouldn't have been able to pay anyway, I guess. They say the war spread the plague around the other colonies. You know how it was, one day the battlefield was L3, the next it was L2, and the next thing you know, the whole damn galaxy was infected. I bet those dollar signs just lit up in your eyes at that news, eh, Winston?”

Sebring peered at him from his office dripping with wealth like he was waiting for Duo to get to the point. The scowl on his face only cemented the grin on Duo's.

“The problem is, you needed that vaccine out fast enough to turn a profit. You had to get it out there before the epidemic passed. All those damn UESN regulations to work through, and the war ending meant you couldn't just test your pharmaceuticals on prisoners of war anymore. Oh, you're surprised I know about that?” Duo remarked, watching Sebring's eyebrows shoot up toward his receding hairline. “Wasn't all that easy connecting the dots, I'll admit. Your people did manage to destroy a lot of that paper trail, seeing as they had a few years head start on me.”

“What kind of information are you in possession of, exactly?” Sebring said evenly. He had a good hold on his temper, Duo noted.

“Now, now, buddy, you don't want me to spoil the surprise, do you? Where was I? Oh yeah, the POWs. Well, _they_ were out of the picture, so where could you go to bypass the regulations and test your vaccine for dirt cheap?” Duo waited.

Sebring sat in his chair, motionless, glaring at the screen.

“Hey, Winston, I asked you a question.” Duo leaned forward and met the man's glare. “Where did you go?”

Sebring said nothing.

“You went right to the goddamn source, didn't you?” Duo answered for him, his voice low. “In L2, the plague was still raging, right? If you went to a charity, an orphanage, somewhere that was barely keeping its head above water as it was, and offered them a chance to get the plague vaccine for free, and all they had to do let their kids participate in a clinical trial, well, who could say no to that? If those kids got sick, there definitely wasn't enough money to pay for the lengthy hospital visits and the medicine. Better to prevent it from the get-go, right?

“So that's what you did, Winston. You took two hundred healthy kids and you gave them a fatal disease just so you could do your little science experiments, figure out what worked and what didn't, so that richer people, more worthy people, could live. Of course, they didn't know that's what you were doing. They thought they were getting the vaccine. But who would care if a couple hundred orphans kicked the bucket so you could make some money, right? Hang another painting in your office?”

Sebring snorted. “Your accusations are ridiculous. You have no proof!”

“Funny, I thought you would say that. I didn't want you to be disappointed, though, so I went ahead and sent all of that stuff to your comm. Read-only, of course.”

As if on cue, Duo heard muffled beeping from Sebring's computer that indicated it had completed a download. Sebring fiddled with his keyboard, his eyes scanning something that had appeared on his screen. His eyes went wide as he saw what Duo had obtained, and was now practically dangling in front of his face.

“There's probably more stuff over there than you care to read right now, but you get the drift. Emails, official correspondence, doctors' reports, hell, I've even got audio recordings from your comm link. Your name is on every single piece. Shakespeare couldn't write a sonnet about what a scumbag you are and have it come out as beautifully as the story in these documents.”

Sebring's upper lip twitched and he tapped his keyboard furiously, his computer screen going black. Suddenly, he leapt out of his chair and shook his finger at the comm video.

“You little shit! Just what do you think you're doing!?”

“Having a chat. What, you're not enjoying our conversation? That's a real shame.”

“You're dead, you hear me? I'll have you killed! You're _nothing_!”

Now it was Duo who wore the look of contempt. “No, Winston, I think you've got it a little twisted. I could have these documents on headline news before you left your office. Better yet, I've got the protocol for Preventers' main headquarters right here, I could give them a call and see what they think about this information. Since you've decided you're going to be difficult, I think I'll just go ahead and do both. And I'll throw in the war prisoner experiments for good measure. I'm thinking that with the amount of evidence I have here, it will be pretty difficult for you to buy out the entirety of Congress _and_ Preventers to keep yourselves from getting prosecuted all the way up the ass. And you can forget about the media. They'll love watching you and your company get drawn and quartered.”

“No, wait!” Sebring shouted, suddenly taking a seat again. He ran a shaking hand through his gaudily dyed hair. “Perhaps we can come to an agreement.”

“See, Winston? I knew you were a practical guy after all.” Duo leaned back in his seat. “Wanna hear my terms?”

“Absolutely.” Sebring swallowed hard, wearing a look of sheer misery. Duo only wished he could savor it longer.

“First of all, you'll be happy to know that I have made a donation of 120 million credits' worth of medicine, through your generous cooperation, to the care of those orphans who you infected. With any luck, they'll make a full recovery.

“Now, my first demand is this: don't make any attempt to retrieve those drugs, or the money that they're worth, from that orphanage or the hospital that's treating those kids. As far as you're concerned, that money was given to charity. Understand?”

Sebring pursed his lips like he tasted something sour, but he nodded.

“Good. Also, you're going to take the bounty off my head, the sooner the better. I've got a couple of warrants under my belt as well. I'd _really_ appreciate it if you could take care of those while you're at it.”

“...Fine. Anything else?”

“That's it. I'm pretty easy to please.”

“And you'll destroy the documents?”

Duo laughed. “Nah, buddy, I think I'll hang on to those a little longer. A shitstain like you shakes with one hand and stabs me in the back with the other.”

Sebring inhaled sharply. He wasn't used to not getting his way, was he? If he had any sense, he'd realize he was lucky that Duo was cutting a deal with him and not just taking him out like the garbage he was. If he didn't have the welfare of those L2 kids to worry about, he probably would have.

“Are we clear?” Duo said.

Sebring swallowed morosely. “Yes.”

“Great. Well, I'm sorry I have to cut our conversation short, but I really have to run. I'll be in touch,” he finished with a grin, and cut the link.

Duo relaxed into his seat, putting his hands behind his head, and closed his eyes, allowing himself a minute just to savor the feeling of victory. That had gone remarkably well.

Now, all he had to do was pick a place on the map to set for his next coordinates and disappear.

“You know,” he said aloud, “I've never been to Jupiter. I hear the moons are lovely this time of year.”

And, with a quick setting of the coordinates, he sailed off for the hyperspace highway.


	4. Jupiter Jazz

_Chapter 4: Jupiter Jazz_  
  
  
Wufei and Heero peered down into the night garden of the Hotel Ganymede Deluxe from their perch on the roof of the main foyer. Clad in all black, sporting infrared goggles in the inky darkness, neither spoke, the quiet scribbling of Wufei’s pen on his pad the only movement between them. Heero never carried a pen or paper; he preferred to keep his notes in his head.  
  
The night gardens were lit only by small ornamental lamps placed low to the ground, illuminating the path across the lawn and through the well-kept arrangements of flowers and trees, obviously meant more for ambiance than utility. From their vantage point, nearly the entirety of the garden could be seen, filled as it was with exotic plants native to all manner of strange parts of the Earth. Directly below them, a small gathering of pitcher plants sat gaping, like baby birds eager for a meal. Even in the dark they seemed vibrant and colorful, but out of place, plucked from the jungle and shipped hundreds of thousands of miles away to their bizarre new home, where no plants could ever naturally grow.  
  
Heero found it somewhat strange that Man, successful in his effort to extend his domain to the far corners of the galaxy, should immediately begin filling the newly-colonized planets and moons with memories of home. He supposed though, too, that he shouldn’t really be surprised. Ganymede was a barren expanse of crater and rock, and its mother planet a swirling, angry hurricane of vapor. Most people didn’t want to spend their lives staring out at nothing but gray. Everything beneath the giant glass domes that spanned this moon had been painstakingly cultivated with artificial sunlight and recycled water to give Ganymede the appearance of life. If you didn’t look up into the blackness of space, you might believe that it was all real. Maybe that made living here bearable.  
  
Though they didn’t close until much later, the gardens were deserted, and had been for most of the time that Wufei and Heero had sat staking out the place. Heero wondered what Wufei could possibly be writing in his notebook. Not a damn thing had happened in nearly four hours.  
  
Allowing himself a tiny sigh of frustration, Heero slipped his infrared goggles off, blinking as his eyes adjusted. These goggles were a favorite toy of Wufei’s but they gave you a piercing headache if you wore them for too long. There was nothing to see in the gardens anyway, just the garishly exotic plants, if you were into that kind of thing. Heero closed his eyes for a moment to let them rest, lamenting yet again that it would be at least another 36 hours Zero was back in flying shape. Until then, they remained interred on Ganymede, stuck in a run-down hotel significantly less comfortable than the one whose roof they found themselves on tonight.  
  
As a consolation prize for their humiliating failure in the Salvage Field, Sally had lined up a modest bounty for them in Ganymede, lest they go stir-crazy waiting for Zero to get fixed. 20,000 credits wasn’t anything get excited over, but it would help with the repairs. That DeFabricio money hadn’t lasted nearly long enough. They were back to eating out of cans in what seemed to be no time at all. And to think that just a few short days ago they’d been fantasizing over what kind of speeder they’d buy. Maybe they were losing their edge.  
  
There was a sharp jab in his side and Heero’s thoughts were brought abruptly short. He glared at Wufei, who merely gestured at his specs and pointed down at the gardens. Finally, it looked like he had found something. Heero slipped on his goggles and peered out in the direction Wufei indicated.  
  
Two people had just entered into his line of sight; through the infrared they appeared as two red and orange blobs in the distance. One was tall and muscular-- probably a man-- and the other was significantly smaller and thinner. It was hard to tell, but it certainly could be a woman. Heero pulled off his goggles and retrieved a set of binoculars from the small bag they’d brought with them.  
  
Yes, it was a woman, Heero confirmed, when he had located the two in the binoculars’ sights. Even in the darkness he could make out a tight ponytail of curly black hair, matching the bounty’s description. He made a mental note as Wufei scratched furiously into his notebook.  
  
The two stood close together, in voices much too low to carry all the way to the roof. The man seemed restless, looking behind him every thirty seconds or so, hands in pockets, but the woman was calm; she seemed confident no one would disturb them.  
  
He watched as she pulled a small paper bag out of her purse and handed it to the man, who grabbed it at once and stuffed it into his pocket. He, too, retrieved something and handed it to her in return. Heero couldn’t see what any of it was, but he didn’t have to. The details of the bounty had told him all he needed to know.  
  
“Black Widow” Sawyer,  _nee_  Janice, dealt all manner of drugs, but the UESN was only willing to post a bounty for one in particular: the black, murky liquid known colloquially as Poison. It derived from Dexamine, a substance ubiquitous during the war as a source of fuel for mobile suits, more efficient than gasoline and, as some eventually discovered, more hallucinogenic. The UESN scrambled in the wake of the war to collect the remaining Dexamine reserves, but evidently they were doing a pretty poor job, as Poison could be obtained even at the farthest reaches of the galaxy. Creating Poison did not require advanced knowledge of chemistry but rather a few easily obtained household chemicals and, of course, Dexamine, the key ingredient. While it was dangerous to attempt and stories of explosions at Poison dens were a nightly news favorite, the smarter dealers had long ago established high-tech facilities to process the materials and produce high-quality, inexpensive Poison in massive quantities. Even Dexamine was still being produced at a healthy rate, even though the UESN considered it a felony and Preventers had made it a top priority to stamp it out.  
  
A memory came to Heero suddenly on the roof as he watched the deal go down. He had once stood in the center of an enormous production facility; someone had shown him how Dexamine was made, enormous tubs of coolant kept at a constant temperature of near-zero degrees surrounding him on all sides. It was a Poison plant, he was sure of it, but he didn’t know why he was so certain of it. The man showing him the plant was taller than him, broad-shouldered, but he could not recall the features of his face at all, just the blurry recollection of a long black coat with a zodiac symbol on the back. The man was saying his name, and Heero was nodding...  
  
Heero snapped back into the present with a jolt. What was  _that_? For the life of him, he couldn’t remember ever stepping foot inside a Poison facility. And yet, that memory had flashed unbidden in his head. He  _knew_ , somehow, that he had been there, with that man, though he didn’t have any idea who that was. The details were hazy, like a dream; there was that zodiac symbol, but he couldn’t remember which one. It was very strange, and Heero found himself vaguely unsettled.  
  
“They’re leaving,” Wufei whispered. Heero peered out with his binoculars again, pushing the weird images of the Dexamine plant out of his mind.  
  
The man in the coat bolted for one direction out of the night garden, while Black Widow made her way casually across the lit path, unconcerned with being seen. Heero and Wufei watched her go through the doors of the glamorous hotel, Wufei scribbling notes on her clothing: all black, stiletto heels, tight ponytail, closely cropped jacket, expensive purse. She certainly dressed ostentatiously for a criminal with a bounty on her head.  
  
As she disappeared through the doors, Heero and Wufei silently hurried to the other side of the roof to track her exit and note which streets she took. When she had disappeared, they packed their goggles and binoculars away and made as quiet an exit as they could down the service stairwell.   
  
They arrived back at their hotel after a lengthy canvassing of the area surrounding the Hotel Ganymede, taking note of possible escape routes that Black Widow might take when they engaged her. The Hotel Ganymede Deluxe it was certainly not; black steel bars covered the windows on their tiny room, the area of which was mostly occupied by two rock-hard cots pushed close together. The beds on Zero were not much more comfortable, but then again, they didn’t have to pay for those.  
  
Regardless, Wufei took a seat on his cot and pulled out a pack of cigarettes, lighting one while he flipped his notebook open to look over what he’d written. “Black Widow arrived at scene approximately 02:30 local time, engaged in cash transaction with unidentified buyer. Total time of transaction: 5 minutes. Subject left via West exit by way of Eden Avenue.”  
  
Heero nodded. “Black slacks, coat, boots, all designer. Small purse. Hair in ponytail.” Wufei might not have noticed those details with the infrared goggles on.  
  
“Well, it certainly sounds like our tip was good.”  
  
“I paid him five-hundred creds, he’d better be.” Heero had watched him turn right around and spend that money on drinks, too. He’d made special note of the man’s route out of the bar just in case he’d turned out to be trying to scam them.  
  
“The guy said she’s at the gardens every night, so we should be able to pick her up tomorrow. Doesn’t seem like she’ll be too difficult to find, anyway. Do you think this shower runs hot?”  
  
Heero snorted in response.  
  
“I can’t wait until Zero is ready to go,” Wufei sighed, but nonetheless stood and made his way for the bathroom, pausing first to extinguish his cigarette in the ashtray perched on the ledge along the barred window before disappearing behind the bathroom door. In a moment, Heero could hear the sudden gush of water rushing from the pipes, and then a quick string of hissed curses in Wufei’s native tongue.  
  
Heero looked around the decidedly spartan room, and decided he’d rather take a walk. Grabbing the ancient key from the lone dresser by the beds, he left quietly and hurried down the hall to the exit.  
  
Outside the hotel, the air was hot and stale, like a building with the air conditioning off. Above the shining streetlights and neon signs of this seedier part of town, the enormous glass domes that made life possible on this barren moon stretched outward in all directions, and beyond that, the monstrous red eye of Jupiter peered down at him, angry storms of gas swirling on its surface. Heero turned away from its gaze and set out down the street. It was late at night, but there were still plenty of people out, mostly drunks and prostitutes, who tried with impressive zeal to entice him inside their establishments. Heero had no interest in any such activity, however, and he kept walking, past gambling joints and karaoke shacks, past late-night food vendors and suspicious clubs. Crowds of ostentatiously dressed people poured out of doors and staggered off down the street or into waiting taxis. Everything was awash in glowing pink and green and blue neon light, as artificial as the atmosphere.  
  
Heero walked without much regard for where he was going, only taking note of the streets he turned down so he could find his way back to the hotel. Eventually, he found a place he thought he might be able to disappear into: a nondescript bar sandwiched between two larger buildings, with a faded sign that read “Abdul’s Hookah”. It was dark and certainly not inviting. He went inside.  
  
The place looked about as old as its patrons, wallpaper faded and peeling, revealing stained concrete underneath. The decor was nothing more than a few tables of various sizes, with mismatching chairs seemingly assigned at random. Some pre-colony movie played on mute on a truly ancient television bolted to one wall. A few old men sat at a couple of the tables, passing the long stem of a hookah pipe around to each other and talking quietly.  
  
The man at the front, presumably Abdul, looked up at Heero’s entrance with seeming disinterest, quickly returning to his pornographic magazine. A vending machine selling various alcohols rested against the wall beside the old TV. Heero bought a beer, the local Ganymede brand ‘Aquila’, and took a booth at a small table farthest in the back, where he could sit uninterrupted and think.  
  
That moment on the roof had been more jarring than Heero wanted to admit. He had absolutely no recollection of any of it happening, but it had to have happened, didn’t it? Otherwise, he was going crazy, and that definitely wasn’t something he wanted to examine at length.  
  
It had felt like a waking dream. The images had a strange hazy quality, like there was a veil over them in his mind that kept him from remembering it all. What was the zodiac symbol? Who was the man wearing it? Had Heero been wearing it himself whenever he had visited that facility? No matter how hard he tried now, he couldn’t remember. Was there  _anything_  else from that place that came to mind?  
  
Try as he might, he could recall nothing. Heero took a deep swig of his beer in frustration and grimaced. No, it wasn’t just this particular instance. In fact, he felt a strange sense of deja vu about it all. Sometimes he would wake from his dreams with a profound sense of anger, but the images would slip from his memory like water into the gutter before he could get a hold on them. The anger alone would remain, with the pervading sense that whatever he had seen in his dreams was real, something conjured from his subconscious, which his waking mind couldn’t or wouldn’t recall. That is, until something like witnessing a drug deal in a garden from the roof of a five-star hotel triggered the memory again. And even then, he couldn’t recall the context or the details, just the vaguest hints and that same uneasy sense of wrongness.  
  
He needed to just forget about it. They were just memories, just dreams, and they didn’t have any connection to his life now. He liked that about being a bounty hunter, actually. All he needed to be was good at his job. An identity was not pivotal to accomplishing that goal. You got the criminal, collected the cash, went on your way, lived your life. There was the vague uncertainty of not knowing how long your money would last or when the next job would come in, but that was what having a manager like Sally was for. And he got along well with Wufei, who was a hard worker and a competent fighter. They didn’t get in each other’s business.  
  
That was enough for him. It was going to have to be, because it appeared he couldn’t force himself to remember whatever remained behind that veil. He wasn’t even sure he wanted to know.  
  
Leaving his beer half-drank on the table, Heero slipped out of the bar and back out into the Ganymede night.  
  
* * *  
  
“You were out late last night,” Wufei said.  
  
Heero gave him a sidelong glance.  
  
“Not that I’m asking any questions. It’s just an observation.”  
  
“Can we just keep focused? The deal should be going down soon.”  
  
“Fine. I just didn’t think you were into that kind of thing.”  
  
“ _What_  kind of thing?” Heero snapped, glaring at Wufei, who simply raised an eyebrow as if it were an accusation.  
  
“I wasn’t at a brothel. Is that what you were thinking?”  
  
“Something like that.”  
  
“Well, I wasn’t. I thought you knew me a little better than that, Wufei.”  
  
Wufei, now looking a little sheepish, shrugged. “You were acting strange yesterday.”  
  
“I just want to get the hell off Ganymede already,” Heero said, dodging the implied question.  
  
“You and me both.”  
  
There was the hollow sound of stiletto heels tapping along the paved stone pathway and they both went silent. Hidden behind a rose bush bursting with odd, hybrid colors, they waited until Black Widow came into view, wearing her characteristic black getup, that telltale purse slung over her shoulder. The man that she was waiting for, unfortunately, would not be making an appearance tonight, as he was lying unconscious in the bushes behind them. Considering the alternative punishment for getting caught trying to purchase Poison, Heero thought the guy was getting off easy with just a headache and a bump on his head.  
  
Wufei, wearing a trench and hat for this occasion, rose at Black Widow’s entrance. He and Heero exchanged a nod and then he was off, silently passing through the hedges of rose bushes to make a roundabout entrance onto the green. Heero, too, rose noiselessly and made his way around the other side, in case the bounty tried to flee.  
  
“Sorry I’m late!” He could hear Wufei say as he approached the target. Getting into position several yards away, Heero knelt behind a tree and turned to watch the engagement happen.  
  
Black Widow looked Wufei up and down. “You don’t look a thing like your picture,” she scoffed. Wufei, taking the cue of the purchaser from last night, looked around the area hastily, as if afraid of being overheard.  
  
“Yeah, well, I lost weight,” he muttered, sounding for all the world like a nervous buyer. “Can we get this over with already? I don’t like being out here in the open like a pair of sitting ducks.”  
  
“Relax, kid,” Black Widow said, “there’re no cameras in this place. Believe me, we’re safer doing business in here than out on the street.”  
  
Well, that explained why she preferred to deal drugs in the middle of an overgrown greenhouse. Every street corner and alley on Ganymede sat under the watchful eye of CCTV. Heero supposed that this gaudy place suited her equally ostentatious outfit more than a seedy club in the red light district.  
  
“Anyway,” she continued, looking at Wufei expectantly. “You got something for me?”  
  
“I sure do,” Wufei said with a smirk.  
  
Suddenly, he grabbed for her, trying to take her down.  
  
Black Widow saw him move to attack an instant before he lunged and twisted out of the way. “Hey, hands off, pervert!” She yelled, then the reality seemed to dawn on her. “A bounty hunter? Shit!”  
  
Stumbling, Wufei pivoted off his planted foot and moved to kick behind him, but Black Widow knocked him out of the way with a grunt and took off down the path. Heero jumped out to block her way and she squealed in surprise, skidding on the stone walkway. For a second, she paused, trying to find an escape route, and finding none, she panicked and launched herself into the nearest hedge, neatly lodging herself in the brambles and thorns of one of the many meticulously groomed rosebushes.  
  
There was a second of silence, and then a piercing, bloodcurdling scream. “My  _coat_!” Black Widow cried in agony. “It’s  _ruined_! You’re paying for this, assholes!”  
  
Wufei and Heero peered into the rose bush, from which only a pair of expensive black heels emerged.  
  
“How are we getting her out of there?”  
  
“Let’s leave her while we call her in.”  
  
“Are you even  _listening_  to me?” Black Widow bellowed, her voice somewhat muffled by the thick leaves that entrapped her. “Do you have any idea how much this  _cost_!?”  
  
“Why can’t you just grab people while they don’t expect it? Why do you always have to say something?”  
  
“That’s not how a man with honor behaves.”  
  
“That’s also not how a man who ever wants to make money in his life behaves.”  
  
“The element of surprise is for cowards! Besides, my plan worked, didn’t it?”  
  
“Will you two  _shut up_!?”  
  
Heero and Wufei paused in their argument to glare at the rosebush, then back at each other. For a moment, neither moved.  
  
Finally, Wufei sighed. “Fine, I’ll get her out.”  
  
“Took you long enough, Christ!”  
  
“ _Shut up_!” They yelled in unison at the bush. Heero pulled out his handcuffs as Wufei yanked Black Widow out of the hedge by her stiletto boots. Her curly hair was a wild mane around her head, leaves and errant twigs sticking out of it in random places. Her expensive coat sported several impressive tears. Despite her ridiculous appearance, she glared at them defiantly as Heero cuffed her and they led her out of the night garden, Wufei calling in the bounty with a sidelong glare at his partner.  
  
“They’ll collect her and honor the bounty at the station on Eden and Third,” he said.  
  
Then, “What would you rather do instead, Heero? Jump out of trees? We tried your ‘element of surprise’ method in the Salvage Field and that didn’t work out in our favor, did it?”  
  
“That was different!”  
  
“Oh really? Tell me how.”  
  
“How did I ever manage to get caught by a couple of incompetents like you?” Black Widow muttered.  
  
“ _Shut up_!” Heero and Wufei bellowed. Leading the bounty by the arms, they walked the rest of the way to the precinct in angry silence.  
  
* * *  
  
Money in their pockets calmed both their tempers down a little. Heero could tell Wufei had taken his comments personally, however. Sometimes, he could be really touchy, especially when he perceived his honor was being criticized. It was a little bizarre, especially considering they didn’t work in the most honorable of professions. There was more than a little element of kidnapping to bounty work, after all.  
  
Heero had long ago weighed the good points to the bad and decided that, overall, he was still doing some good being a bounty hunter, less savory aspects aside. Wufei, it seemed, compensated for those aspects with his strict code of ethics, inefficient as Heero believed that was. Criticisms of his methods were tantamount to criticizing his code of honor. Heero found it draining at times.  
  
And truth be told, Heero was still smarting over that Salvage Field comment. He felt responsible for the entire fiasco. He was the one who had been piloting, and who had failed to avoid the collision that had landed them on Ganymede in the first place. Now it appeared that he wouldn’t hear the end of it for a while.  
  
They wandered away from the precinct in silence, meandering down Eden Avenue in the eternally hot, stifling night. From some unseen bar on a dim side street an improvisational saxophone blared, the lively notes scattering across the cobblestones, followed closely by an enthusiastic smash of cymbals. Heero could almost feel the angry eye of Jupiter on their backs as they walked, as if they trespassed on its domain.  
  
Wufei’s phone buzzed in his coat pocket. He fished it out and, after a short exchange, returned it. “Zero will be ready in an hour or so.”  
  
“Great.”  
  
“We ought to have about 500 credits to spare after the repair bill. Want a drink?”  
  
They found a little place tucked away off the main avenue, another dim, artless bar with a faded sign hanging like an afterthought out in front. Inside, a man played piano between drinks. They took seats at the counter, Wufei ordering beers for the both of them. He lit a cigarette and took a long, grateful drag. For a while, they sat in silence, Heero absently watching people on the street pass by through the nearest window.  
  
Eventually, Wufei cleared his throat. “So, uh, Heero, there is something I want to say.”  
  
Still staring out the window, Heero nodded, taking a swig from his bottle.  
  
“I feel that I was a little out of line back there in the garden tonight. It was wrong for me to criticize your strategy in the Salvage Field, Heero, and for that I apologize.”  
  
Downtown Ganymede was crowded even at this late hour, and the large window afforded Heero a good vantage point to watch people pass by. A couple, arm in arm, deep in secret conversation. A group of middle aged men, instruments of varying kinds slung over their shoulders or clutched in their hands. A lone woman, hat low, black leather jacket unzipped in the heat. No wait, it wasn’t a woman after all. But it was an honest mistake when the man had a thick braid of hair that long.  
  
Heero’s bottle paused halfway to his lips.  
  
“I just want you to know that-- Hey, Heero, are you even listening to me?”  
  
A man with a braid...  
  
“No fucking way.”  
  
“Well, that’s a little rude, don’t you-- Hey! Heero! Where the hell are you going!?”  
  
Heero was out of his seat and headed for the door in a matter of seconds, his bottle, still half-full, falling from his hands and shattering on the floor. The cry of the bartender trailed him along with Wufei’s surprised shout, but he barely registered the sound as he shot out of the bar.  
  
The street was dark and thick with people and for a moment he thought he had lost sight of Duo Maxwell in the throng. But hair that long was hard to miss, and he caught sight of the criminal just as he turned off onto the main avenue. Heero practically sprinted down the street after him, dodging pedestrians with barely a passing glance, heart racing with the possibility of actually catching the idiot who had caused them so much grief. Some benevolent God must have been looking out for them, to have none other than Duo Maxwell stroll past the same bar on the same moon that they had happened upon. It had to be the work of fate.  
  
Heero turned onto the main avenue and slowed to a fast walk. He had to blend in with the rest of the crowd on the street or Maxwell might notice him. He was still several yards behind, and he kept a watchful eye on that braided head as he moved to catch up. Duo Maxwell strolled along at a relaxed pace, oblivious to the man lurking only a short distance behind him. Heero dodged a group of teenagers, banking sharply left and then right around a street sign. When he was fifty feet behind, he broke into a full sprint, pushing people mindlessly out of his way. He could feel that bounty money in his hands, but even more sweetly, he could feel revenge. He had sworn Duo Maxwell would pay, and Heero Yuy did not swear lightly.  
  
Like a fish swimming blissfully past a hammerhead shark, Duo Maxwell did not even see his attacker when he struck. Heero grabbed him bodily and slammed him to the ground in a full-body tackle.  
  
“What the hell!?” Duo yelled, struggling against his unseen foe. “Do you have any idea who you’re messing with, buddy?”  
  
Heero smirked even as he resisted Duo’s attempts to escape. Duo was strong, but he was much stronger. “I know exactly who you are, Duo Maxwell.”  
  
Duo whipped his head around, and his eyes went wide. “You again? Jesus Christ!” He rolled, trying to free his arms, but Heero hung on, locking Duo’s arms behind his back and they ended their struggle with Duo lying face-down on the pavement, Heero sitting fully on top of him.  
  
Giddy with victory, Heero threw back his head and laughed, oblivious to the confused stares of the crowd that had gathered around the scene.  
  
“Laugh it up, psycho,” Duo muttered from the ground. “You’re making a mistake. Let me go now and I promise to forgive and forget, okay?”  
  
“We can forgive and forget when you’re in police custody.”  
  
“I don’t have a bounty on my head anymore, genius!”  
  
“That’s the most pathetic lie I have ever heard.”  
  
Duo sighed dramatically, still struggling to free himself. Heero only pulled his arms back tighter.  
  
“Hey pal, you’re gonna break my arm if you keep that up!”  
  
“You mean, if  _you_  keep struggling.”  
  
“Great, I’m being held against my will by a sadist. If I had a lawyer she’d  _definitely_  be hearing about this.”  
  
“Heero!” He heard Wufei yell from somewhere, and then his partner pushed through the crowd of onlookers and stared down at the two of them on the ground, cigarette still dangling from his lips.  
  
“You!” He hissed at Duo, eyes narrowing to slits.  
  
“Do you have your cuffs?” Heero asked gruffly. “I left mine at the precinct.”  
  
“No, they’re back on the ship. Zero should be ready to go by now, let’s take him there. He’s high priority anyway, we can’t take him to a Ganymede station.”  
  
“I’m trying to tell your partner here that you’re making a mistake,” Duo said to Wufei, who just glared down at him. “There’s no more bounty, you two are just wasting your time!”  
  
Heero hauled Maxwell off the ground, arms still clasped behind him. “You can tell that to the head at Preventers HQ when we get there and see what they say,” Wufei replied, and they dragged him off down the street.


	5. Bad Dog, No Biscuit!

_Chapter 5: Bad Dog, No Biscuit!_  
  
  
“Now look, man, I wouldn’t say I’m the most normal guy in the world, but this is getting a little too kinky even for me.”  
  
“Shut up,” Heero said, for what felt like the hundredth time. He could hear Tchaikovsky blaring in the cockpit; Wufei was probably trying to drown out Duo Maxwell’s incessant chatter as he piloted. Heero, tasked with watching the bounty, was not so lucky. Seated on the couch with his computer open in front of him, he dutifully attempted to ignore him all the same.  
  
Duo sighed from his position on the floor. “Handcuffs are fun and all but my wrists are starting to chafe.” He shifted again, his handcuffs rattling against the stairway banister around which his hands had been securely locked.  
  
Heero continued typing code into his laptop and said nothing.  
  
“Heero,” Duo continued, having picked up his name from overheard conversation along the way. “Is this because of the stuff that went down in the Salvage Field? ‘Cuz you know, I didn’t mean anything personal by it.”  
  
Duo waited for a response. Receiving none, he continued anyway.  
  
“Besides, you were shooting at me! Tell me you wouldn’t have done the same yourself!”  
  
“Stop talking.” Heero rubbed his forehead. He could feel a headache coming on.  
  
“Why don’t we at least take the handcuffs off while we wait? For, you know, Stacy or whoever.”  
  
“Sally. And no.”  
  
“Aw, come on, Heero!” Duo shifted again to take a seat on the first stair, the sound of metal clattering against itself echoing around the room. “Be a pal!”  
  
“ _No_. And I am not your  _pal_.” Heero’s temples pounded. Could Heero kill him and still collect the bounty?  
  
“Fine, Christ. I’m just trying to be friendly.”  
  
Heero glared at him. Duo met his glare for a moment, then attempted a shrug, his wrists rattling on the banister.  
  
Finally, there was blissful silence. Heero gratefully sat back on the couch, his eyes sliding closed. His jaw, which he had clenched unconsciously, relaxed; he could feel the exhaustion of the last couple of days catching up with him, and it was almost a relief to be able to finally allow it to wash over him. It felt so good to be back on Zero again. Even the scratchy old couch felt blissfully soft and comfortable after the cot back in their dingy hotel. And now that they wouldn’t have to worry about money for a while, he could really kick back. He could work on his Tai Chi, or improve his meditation, or write up some more code for Zero. The possibilities seemed endless.  
  
“You know, these are some nice digs you got here.”  
  
Once again, Duo Maxwell started up, shattering his peace of mind. Heero’s eyes slid open and he peered over at the stairwell. Duo was looking around, taking in the main living area, and craning his neck to try to see down the second floor hallway.  
  
“Is this your ship?” Duo continued.  
  
It seemed that no matter how many times he told him to shut up, or even ignored him outright, Duo would continue to talk. His resilience would have impressed him if it wasn’t so infuriating.  
  
“Yes.”  
  
Why was he bothering to respond?  
  
Well, it was less stressful than trying to ignore him, at least.  
  
“I thought it was a dingy old piece of shit when I saw it in the Salvage Field, but the inside is pristine.” He grinned. “I’m surprised you managed as well as you did back there, actually. A ship this big ain’t supposed to go that fast.”  
  
Heero wasn’t sure if Duo was complimenting Zero or insulting it. Probably both.  
  
“You have to admit,” Duo went on, “it was kind of a fun chase.”  
  
Heero snorted.  
  
“That little trick with the magnets? You can’t tell me you weren’t a  _little_  impressed.”  
  
“It was... inventive.”  
  
“Thanks,” Duo said, grinning widely. “You weren’t so bad yourself.”  
  
Heero shook his head. He’d never had a bounty compliment him before. It was strange, to say the least.  
  
“How long did you say it was going to take Susie to get back to you?”  
  
“Sally. And I told you I didn’t know.”  
  
“Ballpark?”  
  
“A few hours. I don’t know. I already told you.” He glared at Duo before he could ask again.  
  
“Fine, fine.” Duo stretched out as much as his position would let him. “Well, that gives us some time to get to know each other, doesn’t it?”  
  
Heero turned and looked at him for a while, but Duo’s expression was completely unreadable. Had he just asked that in earnest?  
  
“What’s the point?” Heero said suddenly.  
  
“Huh? What do you mean?”  
  
“I mean, what’s the point of ‘getting to know each other’? We are waiting for clearance to turn you in for a bounty.” He peered at the handcuffs on Duo’s wrists. “Is this some kind of emotional appeal?”  
  
Duo sighed. “Nah,” he muttered. “Forget it. You’re not going to listen if I try to explain to you anyway.”  
  
With another clanging shrug, he shifted himself along the banister until he was leaning against the metal partition, his back turned to Heero, his shoulders hanging in a crestfallen slump.  
  
Heero stared at those shoulders for a minute. He should be happy that Duo had given up talking to him. His computer waited patiently for him to continue his work. He set his fingers on the keys, but hesitated. It seemed he couldn’t remember what he had been doing, probably Duo’s fault, interrupting his concentration with all that inane chatter.  
  
Heero tried to muster up some of the anger he had felt for Duo Maxwell ever since their encounter in the Salvage Field, but for some reason he found it difficult to summon. He turned his gaze toward that brown head of hair, with its long braid pooling around Duo’s seated form.  
  
“What did you want to talk about?” He found himself saying.  
  
Duo turned his head to peer at Heero over his shoulder. “I thought you didn’t see the point.”  
  
“I don’t, but I guess there isn’t any harm in it.”  
  
“Yeah, okay. I’ll take what I can get,” Duo replied, and turned so he could see Heero over the banister rail. “Well, let’s talk about the ship. What’s her name?”  
  
“Wing Zero.”  
  
“That’s an interesting name. What’s the ‘Zero’ for? Zero gravity?”  
  
Heero frowned, unsure.  
  
“Just ‘Zero’,” he said finally. Duo gave him an incredulous look.  
  
“You didn’t name your ship after anything?”  
  
He supposed it was a little odd. Most ships were named and renamed according to the whims of their various owners, but Heero had never understood the point of attaching sentimental value to a ship’s name-- or maybe he just didn’t have anything worth the distinction.  
  
“Wing Zero was the name it came with when I bought it. It fits.”  
  
Duo peered at him from the stairs but seemed to accept the answer.  
  
“Specs? I saw a couple of turbines on the back. How fast can she go?” His eyes were lit with interest, and he had the eager tone of a little boy discussing his hobbies.  
  
“130 or 140 in open space. About half an AU max in hyperspace.” Heero allowed himself a tiny smirk when he saw Duo’s eyes go wide at those numbers.  
  
“That’s a lot of speed for such a big ship. What kind of engine you got in there?”  
  
“Romefeller 4800.”  
  
Duo whistled. “No wonder you can push her like you do. That’s a monster of an engine. It runs on nuclear fuel, right? Bet that eats your money up in a big way.”  
  
Heero shrugged. “Zero is pretty efficient.”  
  
“I noticed she’s suited up for salvage work. You got a history in the business?”  
  
He shook his head. “From her former life.”  
  
“Bet she wasn’t outfitted with laser beam guns when you bought her, huh?” Duo added, grinning. “I was too busy trying to cover my ass to really admire them but what I saw was pretty snazzy.”  
  
“There’s something I want to know about you,” Heero interrupted. Actually, the question had been bothering him ever since the battle in the L2 Salvage Field.  
  
Duo seemed pleased to hear it. “Oh yeah? Ask away.”  
  
“How did you hack our comm link so quickly?”  
  
“I am just that good at what I do,” Duo said, laughing. “Finding your protocol was the hard part. The hacking was a breeze.”  
  
Heero frowned. “It shouldn’t have been. I wrote the firewall myself.” He had also run a hacking simulation through it at least a thousand times and it had seemed impossible to breach. To have Duo dismantle it as fast as he had was more of a blow to his ego than he had been willing to admit.  
  
“Wrote it yourself, huh? I  _thought_  it seemed like a custom job. Listen, don’t take it personally. There ain’t a code in the universe that I can’t crack,” Duo declared, grinning proudly.  
  
“Cocky.”  
  
“I like to think of it as a healthy appreciation for my own strengths. Besides, you’re a bit of a egomaniac yourself, ain’t that right?”  
  
Heero bristled at the assertion. “What are you talking about?”  
  
“You’ve got a problem with competition.”  
  
Heero said nothing, his eyes slits as he stared Duo down, challenging him to continue.  
  
Duo seemed entirely unfazed by Heero’s angry glare. “Admit it: the reason I’m in custody is because you’re pissed that I beat you in the Field and not because of any bounty. I hacked your ship and outmaneuvered you and it’s driving you crazy!”  
  
“That’s ridiculous,” Heero shot back. “I do not have a problem with competition.”  
  
“Oh yeah? It sure seems like I’ve hit a nerve,” Duo replied, looking pretty damn proud of himself.  
  
That familiar anger rose in him again, but Heero did not want to admit to Duo that he was even a little bit correct. Instead, he shot him another malicious look and began typing on his computer. That had been enough distraction for the time being.  
  
Duo’s smile fell to a pout. “Aw, come on, Heero, I was just messing around! You shouldn’t make it so easy to push your buttons.”  
  
“I don’t care what someone like  _you_  has to say about my personality.”  
  
Duo’s hands twitched in their restraints. His wide eyes narrowed slightly. “What the hell does  _that_  mean?”  
  
“You’re a career criminal with a record for armed robbery and felony theft with a bounty on your head. Why should I listen to anything you say?”  
  
“I don’t--” Duo started, voice rising, but cut himself off with a shake of his head.  
  
When he started again, he seemed to have reined his emotions in a little. “I never did anything I didn’t have to do. Bet your past isn’t so rosy either, is it, bounty hunter?”  
  
Heero was silent. Even if he could answer the question, he wouldn’t have. They stared each other down across the living room for a minute, both fuming. Wufei’s music floated obliviously in from the cockpit, a surreal soundtrack to the palpable tension between them.  
  
“Why did you do it, then?” Heero said finally. “For money?”  
  
“Steal the drugs? Are you kidding? I didn’t see a dime from that.” Duo spoke through a smirk but his words belied his anger. It looked like Heero knew how to push his buttons too. The thought gave him a haughty sort of satisfaction.  
  
“So why did you do it?” He asked again.  
  
“There were people who needed my help, and I did what I had to to give it to them.” Duo offered nothing more. “Do you bounty hunt for the money?” He asked instead, going on the offensive.  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“Liar,” Duo accused. “You’d be pulling mobile suits out of salvage if it was just for the money, right? But that’s too over-the-table, too unionized. People can disappear into bounty hunting and that’s why they do it, ‘cuz God knows the money ain’t enough.”  
  
He shrugged. “At least, that’s what I think.”  
  
“Think whatever you want.”  
  
“I’d really like to get to find out what you’re disappearing from,” Duo said, and now his gaze was boring into Heero’s, trying to find something, but Heero didn’t know what. He found himself suddenly nervous, totally unused to scrutiny. It took all of his resolve to meet Duo’s gaze instead of flinch back.  
  
“There’s something there for sure,” Duo continued, his eyes-- a deep, striking violet-- never leaving Heero’s. “Wish I knew what it was. You’re an interesting guy, Heero.”  
  
Then, he broke eye contact, grinning and attempting a yawn. “But we’ve got time to find stuff like that out, don’t we? No point hounding you about it now.”  
  
What was he talking about? If by ‘time’ he meant hours, then yes, but soon they would be surrendering him to police custody, and then it would be like this conversation had never happened. He was just another bounty, after all.  
  
Odd that the first word that had come to mind was ‘surrender’. Like he was doing it against his will. Didn’t he want to see Duo Maxwell arrested, and didn’t he want that 30 million in his hands? Yes, of course he did. They needed that money. He wouldn’t let himself think otherwise. Heero set his fingers down on the keyboard again, but his eyes were drawn instead back to the thief locked to the stairs.  
  
He had never met another bounty so convinced their actions were justified. Not that he had any love to lose for a monolithic company like Sebring-Cooper, but the man was a criminal, plain and simple. He had a file on his computer with Duo’s mugshot to prove it. So what was the point of his antics on the ship? Why engage him in friendly banter, when their relationship, if it could even be called that, was nothing if not hostile? He was a  _bounty hunter_  for God’s sake. What was he aiming at by trying to reach out to him?  
  
“There isn’t any time,” Heero said, finally, and the tone of his voice sounded strange even to himself. Duo gave him a long look, before opening his mouth to respond.  
  
All of a sudden, Wufei strolled in from the cockpit, eyeing Duo on the stairs before he turned his attention to Heero. “Sally just got back to us. I put her on hold, boot up the screen.”  
  
He frowned, glancing over at Duo one more time, before turning his attention fully to the screen on the living room table, which turned on with a flash of black. Wufei peered over Heero’s shoulder, eager to get started. Heero tried to muster up the same enthusiasm, but found it elusive. He tried to focus instead on the massive amount of money that would soon make its way into their bank accounts.  
  
For a bounty of this magnitude, they couldn’t drop him off at any local precinct. Some remote satellite police station certainly wouldn’t be able to fund the full reward. With the real high-profile cases, the collection agency was none other than the Preventers themselves, and that was where Duo Maxwell would go once Sally arranged for docking permission and secured a contract to honor the bounty.  
  
After a couple of seconds of black, the screen cleared and their manager’s face could be seen. She took a long look at both of them.  
  
“Hello, boys,” she said, but instead of her usual beaming smile, she wore an expression of vague discomfort. Her lips pursed, and she paused, like she was about to tell them something unpleasant.  
  
“I have some... bad news,” Sally finally said. “Actually, confusing news as well.”  
  
Wufei frowned. “What do you mean?”  
  
“Well, I got your message that you had Duo Maxwell in custody, so I contacted the Bounty Office to get things in order, get your contract secured, all of that. Only...” Sally chewed on her bottom lip.  
  
“Only what?” Wufei pressed.  
  
“Only... they told me the bounty has been rescinded.”  
  
“What?” They cried in unison. Heero looked over to Duo on the stairs, who didn’t look surprised at all to hear the news. In fact, he looked downright smug. He met Heero’s gaze with raised eyebrows, grinning.  
  
“It’s the most bizarre thing,” Sally continued. “Sebring-Cooper took the bounty off the market-- overnight, apparently. They’ve dropped all charges, too. I did a warrant search as well, and all those warrants for armed robbery and the others, they’re all gone too!”  
  
Heero stared at Duo in disbelief. He knew that Duo had somehow managed to accomplish all this. Either that, or he was psychic. All that talk of no longer having a bounty on his head hadn’t been just a last-ditch attempt at leniency after all. Duo had made the bounty, and, even more impossibly, the prior warrants just disappear.  
  
Wufei’s face was the very picture of crestfallen, no doubt watching his fantasies of buying a speeder fade before his very eyes. A dangerously crimson flush spread up his cheeks.  
  
“I’m sorry, boys, but it looks like you’re going to have to let him go.”  
  
“You’re kidding,” Wufei said finally.  
  
“Afraid not, though I can barely believe it myself. Who ever heard of a 30 million bounty getting pulled?” She sighed. “Oh well, you win some, you lose some, isn’t that just the way this business goes? I’ll let you boys know when the next bounty comes in.”  
  
Heero nodded and, with a last sympathetic shake of her head, Sally hung up. For a moment, no one spoke, too distressed or shocked to break the silence.  
  
Except for one person, who was neither shocked or distressed by the turn of events.  
  
“I told you so,” Duo said, kicking his legs out in front of him on the landing. “But does anyone ever listen to Duo Maxwell? Nope.”  
  
Wufei’s eyes narrowed to slits and he started over to the stairs, but Heero, who had been watching the color rise to the man’s cheeks with concern, shot up quickly and held him firmly by the shoulder before he could, by the look on his face, strangle Duo to death with his bare hands.  
  
“How did you do it?” Heero asked.  
  
Duo answered with that cocky laugh. “A man’s got to have his secrets, Heero.”  
  
“You little bastard--” Wufei began, trying to struggle out of Heero’s grip. Heero quickly caught his other shoulder in a tight clutch, strong enough to keep Wufei from pulling away, and he was left glaring impotently at Duo, who didn’t look the least bit frightened.  
  
“Wufei,” Heero said in warning. “Maybe you should sit down.”  
  
“Yeah, Wufei, you’re looking a little red in the face. Feeling okay?” Duo said. His eyes met Wufei’s dead on, as if challenging him to try getting past Heero.  
  
Wufei exploded into a litany of foreign curses-- Heero didn’t have to understand them to know they couldn’t be anything else-- and collapsed heavily onto the couch. He no longer seemed quite so ready to assault their captive guest, though, so Heero relaxed his grip, which had been tight enough to probably be painful.  
  
“What are we going to do with him?” Wufei said at length, when he had calmed down a little.  
  
“Well, we don’t really have a choice,” Heero replied. He noticed Duo’s self-satisfied expression and frowned. Somehow, seeing that grin, he felt like they had lost another battle. “He’s not a criminal in the eyes of the law. We have to let him go.”  
  
“Can we take the handcuffs off now, guys?” Duo interjected, rattling his restraints against the banister for effect.  
  
Wufei shot him a look of pure malice, and made no motion to get up. Heero walked over instead, pulling the key out of his pants pocket, and reluctantly unlocked Duo’s handcuffs.  
  
Duo immediately stood up and stretched, rubbing his wrists where the cuffs had dug uncomfortably.  
  
“Thanks, man,” he said, and unexpectedly patted Heero on the back. Heero jumped and turned quickly, pocketing the handcuffs.  
  
“We’ll drop you off at the next way station,” Heero said gruffly.  
  
“Aw, come on, Heero, you dragged me off Ganymede under false arrest and now you’re going to abandon me in the middle of the galaxy? You could at least take me back.”  
  
Wufei snorted, but Heero was quiet for a moment. “Fine,” he said finally.  
  
“You can’t be serious,” Wufei started, but Heero stared him down until he finally shrugged.  
  
“Whatever. I suppose your next mark is on Ganymede, Maxwell? Is that why you’re so adamant to return?”  
  
“My  _ship_  is on Ganymede, buddy. Not a mark. Besides,” he said, giving Heero a strange look of... determination? Heero stared back, not sure what Duo’s expression meant to convey. “I think I’m going to clean up my act.”  
  
“Oh really?” Wufei shot back. “What were you planning to try now? Insurance fraud?”  
  
“Haha, funny,” Duo said. Then, he grinned mischievously.  
  
“Actually, I was thinking of giving bounty hunting a try.”  
  
Heero and Wufei both stared. Duo gave them a nonchalant shrug. “Whaddaya say, guys? There’s more than enough room on the ship for three. Split the rewards three ways, even stevens.”  
  
“Absolutely not,” Wufei said quickly. Heero just stared. Duo turned to him with that same grin.  
  
“Come on, Heero, you said you didn’t have a problem with a little  _competition_.”  
  
Wufei snorted. “You’re crazy if you think that we’d ever--”  
  
“What do you have to offer us?” Heero interrupted. Wufei whipped his head around to stare at his partner.  
  
“You cannot be seriously considering letting this  _idiot_  join us.”  
  
“He’s not an idiot,” Heero said, then frowned, surprised with his own statement.  
  
“I mean, he hacked our comm link in seconds,” he added quickly. Wufei’s look was incredulous. Heero turned to Duo instead. “Still, is that all you have?” He pushed, cocking one eyebrow.  
  
“Don’t forget I left you spinning in the Salvage Field,” Duo replied, cocking an eyebrow right back. “But I’m a generous guy, I’ll do you one better: if you let me use your ship... I’ll let you use mine.”  
  
That certainly got Wufei’s attention. “The speeder?”  
  
“Deathscythe is the fastest ship in the galaxy. And I’ll let you take her out on all the little pleasure cruises you want. When I’m not using her, of course.”  
  
Wufei and Heero exchanged a look. Only a few minutes ago, they had been salivating over the possibility of buying a speeder with the money from Duo Maxwell’s bounty, and now, they were being offered one for free. They had even taken it on a test drive around the Salvage Field, so to speak; they saw how it moved, how quickly and adeptly it maneuvered even in those conditions. God only knew if they would enough money to buy another one anytime soon. Could they even afford to turn the offer down?  
  
Wufei was obviously wrestling with his dislike of Duo and his desire to get his hands on that ship; he kept glaring at him and then back at his lap, muttering something too low for Heero to catch.  
  
Finally, he stood up, giving Heero a long look. “I’ll go along with whatever you decide,” he said, then stalked back into the cockpit. Soon, Tchaikovsky blared from behind its doors, even louder than before.  
  
The choice was evidently his to make. Heero glanced at Duo, who stood, arms crossed, expectant. That potshot about competition came back to him and he frowned.  
  
“There’s a free room two doors from the left,” he muttered.  
  
Duo smiled widely, victorious. “Thanks, Heero,” he said, and hurried up the stairs to check out his new place.  
  
Heero sat back down on the couch, running his hands through his messy hair, and wondered just what the hell he was getting himself into.


	6. Clutch

_Chapter Six: Clutch_

 

Duo woke to the smell of something cooking on a stove. He stretched and rolled over in groggy half-sleep, the hard metal frame of his cot groaning as he moved over it. In the mess hall below, the nuns were preparing breakfast, and though most of the kids raced each other to get the first servings of oatmeal or chicken soup, he was content to lay still a moment longer and savor the warmth of his bed. The sisters always made sure every kid had enough to eat anyway. From the smell of it, they were cooking eggs, not his favorite food, but they sure filled you up... 

Duo sat bolt upright in his bed, shaking his head, suddenly alert. That was weird. For a moment, he had really imagined himself back in that dormitory bedroom, eight years old again. Jeez. Seemed like the events of late had had more of an effect on him than he’d thought. He almost never dreamt about the orphanage anymore.

He looked around his room, which was not a dormitory at all, but the small cabin of a cruiser spaceship, and not even the familiar one he’d known on the Sweepers hub station. This one belonged to the bounty hunters Heero Yuy and Wufei Chang, who he’d taken up with only a week ago. Deathscythe sat in the dock somewhere below deck. His utilitarian room held only the cot and a small dresser for his belongings, its only light source a panel halogen light overhead. He could touch the wall to light it, but he shuffled out of bed and pulled some slacks out of his dresser in the darkness instead.

Wufei was most likely the one cooking; he seemed to fancy himself a chef, though more often than not they’d been eating beans and instant rice out of a pot for the last week. It was lucky that Duo had an iron stomach, because he suspected that both ingredients were long past due. Not that he had room to talk, really; the only food stashed in ‘Scythe was a few bags of pilfered chips and beef jerky. Not exactly the breakfast of champions.

The doors to his cabin opened automatically as he approached them, and he walked out into the hallway, pausing to peek his head into the doorway of Heero’s room. He was nowhere to be found, however. 

Duo descended the staircase to the first floor landing. Heero’s laptop perched idly on the living room table, the screen displaying only that Zero was cruising on autopilot. So, no one in the cockpit and no one in the living room. Following the smell of breakfast, he continued through the nearest set of doorways and peered into the kitchen. 

Wufei stood at the stove top, poking at something in a frying pan with a spatula as he puffed on a cigarette that dangled precariously over the food. His hair in its ubiquitous tight ponytail, he wore a look of intense concentration, not even acknowledging Duo as he stepped into the room. Something bubbled in a pot beside the frying pan.

“What’s cookin’?” Duo said, leaning against the door frame. 

Wufei looked him up and down; Duo noticed the glare he was hardly trying to suppress. He’d been on the Wing Zero for a week and Wufei still only barely tolerated his presence. Now, based on the scowl he was giving him, the problem was apparently his clothing, as if it was a crime to walk around the ship without a shirt on. Never mind that the guy was wearing a funny-looking apron himself. 

“Eggs,” he said at last.

“Didn’t know we had any of those.”

 “I found some in the fridge in the crawlspace,” Wufei replied curtly. “They’ll be ready in a minute.”

“Uh, that’s okay,” Duo said quickly. Wufei gave him a sidelong glance, then returned his attention to the frying pan.

“There’s beans too,” he added, indicating the bubbling pot.

“You know, buddy, I’m not really all that hungry,” Duo said, stepping backward out of the kitchen. ‘Past due’ didn’t even begin to describe the state he imagined those eggs to be in. It looked like it was going to be a beef jerky morning.

He turned quickly out of the living room and veered around the couch. Beyond the kitchen was a hall that dead-ended at the ladder to the docking area. Duo took the rungs two at a time, stomach rumbling. At the bottom, the wall beside the ladder sported a hatch, and Duo pulled on the large, rusting lever until the mechanism gave way and the wide steel door opened with a screech of protest.

The dock was wide enough for two small ships to park side by side, but Deathscythe had the whole place to herself, massive black wings outstretched to their fullest extent. Her black paint gleamed under the hangar’s peripheral lights like the skin of a great serpent. She gazed down at him from ten feet over his head through the green, narrow slats of her headlights.

Even in repose, he thought proudly, Deathscythe cut an imposing figure.

There was a shuffle of footsteps from the far side of the dock and, to his surprise, Heero Yuy appeared, a sheepish frown on his face. Well, that was what he assumed his expression indicated. He couldn’t be sure _what_ Heero was thinking most of the time.

“I wanted to take a look at your ship,” he admitted to Duo as he came closer.

“I don’t blame you, she’s a work of art.”

They stood awkwardly for a moment together, until Duo spoke up to break the silence. “Uh, I’m heading into the cockpit to grab some breakfast. Wanna check it out?”

Heero’s eyes lit up and Duo found himself grinning. Man, did he have a read on this guy or what?

“Come on, I’ll take you up,” Duo continued, and they walked to a panel console on Deathscythe’s side. He punched in a quick password and a hatch overhead opened automatically, a small ladder extending itself downwards to them. Duo indicated for Heero to go first, and they followed the ladder up into the cockpit.

Duo flipped a switch by the entrance for the auxiliary lights and the cabin washed over in pale yellow light. It was cramped for two people; they had to maneuver around each other so Duo could take a seat in front of the main dash console, while Heero contented himself to stand by the entrance and take in his surroundings. With the auxiliary on, a galaxy of myriad buttons and panels glowed green over the entirety of the cockpit. The dashboard contained an assortment of odometers and readouts, indicating everything from the fuel level to the status of the computer system’s firewall, centered around a comm screen that idled black above a keyboard lit from beneath with that same green hue. Above Duo’s seat was the emergency exit hatch and on the far wall was the console for the ejection system.

Heero approached the main console, glancing over the twin joysticks perched at the ends of the pilot’s seat with a slight widening of his eyes.

“Laser guns?”

Duo grinned. “You look surprised.”

“How come you didn’t use them on us?”

“Well, unlike you maniacs, I wasn’t trying to blow myself up with a floating mine. I still can’t believe you guys opened fire in a place like that.”

He reached under the pilot’s seat and pulled out a small box where he kept his stash of food. Heero snorted when he saw Duo open the bag of jerky.

“That’s your breakfast?” 

“You obviously didn’t see what Wufei was cooking,” Duo replied, pulling out a strip and popping it gratefully into his mouth. 

“Do you remember ever buying eggs?” He added, chewing vigorously. 

Heero frowned. “That was months ago.”

“Jerky for breakfast doesn’t sound so bad in comparison, does it?”

“I guess not.”

Heero peered at the elements of the console in front of them, fascinated.

“These don’t look standard,” he said.

“Yeah, that’s because I built ‘em,” Duo replied, popping another piece of jerky into his mouth.

“You built the dashboard?”

“I built the _ship_ , buddy.”

That managed to get Heero’s full attention.

“You built the _entire_ ship?” He repeated, incredulous.

Duo grinned. “Right down to the engine.”

Heero’s eyebrows shot up. “Where did you get all the parts?”

“They’re all salvage. I spent a lot of time in the Field, you know. The dash frame and the guns used to belong to a mobile suit. I had to make the odometers from scratch though. Couldn’t find anything floating around that had what I was looking for.”

“Did you paint that mural on the bottom, too?”

“Nah, that was a present from one of the salvage guys.”

Actually, the entire ship was more or less a present from the Sweepers, when he really thought about it. Most of the parts that went into Deathscythe fetched a substantial price on the secondary market, especially the stuff he had salvaged from the suits. They had insisted the mechanic and engineering work he did on their ships in return was payment enough, but he knew there was really no comparison. He owed them a lot; he owed everyone a lot, actually. Who knew if he would ever have a chance to make good on all of his debts? 

“Hey,” he said, trying to clear his mind, “we ever going to get a bounty to chase or what?”

Heero shrugged. “Most of the time, it’s like this.”

“A week of nothing?”

“More like a month.”

“Sheesh, what do you do to keep from going crazy?”

Another shrug. “I don’t mind the downtime.”

“Maybe _you_ don’t, but I don’t think I could take an entire month cooped up in this ship with your uptight partner.”

Heero bristled. “I don’t know how glamorous you thought bounty hunting was going to be, Duo, but this is the way it is.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m sorry I said anything,” Duo muttered, stashing the remainder of the jerky away back under the seat. He’d gone a little too far with that comment about Wufei, and now Heero was pissed. The last time they’d been alone like this, when he’d been unceremoniously hauled over to the staircase and handcuffed to the banister, it had been rather the same. Just when he thought they were beginning to get along, he did something that ticked him off and they were back at square one. Duo had thought maybe Heero didn’t think he was such a bad guy-- he’d defended him to Wufei and, after all, hadn’t he been the one to let him join them?-- but it seemed he had just overstepped his bounds, assumed they were on better terms. Maybe Heero was only tolerating him, like his partner, but just managed to keep a better poker face.

The cabin suddenly seemed conspicuously small in the newly tense atmosphere. With a stretch, he rose and indicated for Heero to descend the ladder first. Duo followed, hitting the auxiliary power off as he exited.

Back on the ground and with more space to breathe, Duo’s masochistic streak decided he should try again. “I’m just saying, Heero, there’s more than one way to make some cash when business is slow.” He entered a password into the side console again, and the ladder hurried up and away, the cockpit hatch shutting behind it.

Heero gave him a look and Duo sighed dramatically.

“I don’t mean _stealing_ ,” he muttered. “Christ. Give me a break already.”

“I am _not_ doing salvage,” Heero said, turning to walk out of the dock. Duo followed after him. They shut the screeching hatch door behind them.

“I’m not talking about salvage, _either_. Look, do you play cards?”

Heero paused with one foot on the ladder to the main floor, poised to ascend. “Cards?”

“Yeah, poker, blackjack, seven card stud. _Cards_.”

“You’re talking about gambling,” Heero said thickly. Duo rolled his eyes.

“Yeah, pal, it’s not illegal, last time I checked. And aren’t we orbiting around L3 anyway? There’s a million satellite casinos all over the place.”

Heero finally started up the ladder and Duo hurried after him. “No.”

“‘No’, what?”

“I don’t gamble,” Heero elaborated. “The odds are never in your favor. Why would I play a game that I’m guaranteed to lose?”

“I wouldn’t suggest it if I expected us to _lose_ , Heero. I don’t mean cheating, either. I’m talking simple mathematical principles.”

Heero snorted.

“Come on, man, it’ll be fun. With the added possibility of making some cash. What could be better?”

They ascended the staircase to the main floor, where the smell of Wufei’s cooking was still overpowering. They found him sitting in the easy chair in the living room, the pan of scrambled eggs of indeterminate age half-eaten in front of him. He looked decidedly worse for wear, a clammy shade of pale coloring his cheeks.

“Those eggs have to be bad by now, Wufei,” Heero belatedly noted.

Wufei stood and headed directly for the second floor bathroom without a word. Heero dutifully took the pan to the kitchen and dumped the remaining eggs into the garbage. Duo sat back on the couch, kicking his feet up on the table.

“You gotta admit, Heero, we could use some money. We’re going to end up like Wufei too if we keep eating nothing but beans and rice.”

“If you want to lose all your money at the casino, that’s your prerogative,” Heero replied as he returned from the kitchen, taking a seat in the easy chair Wufei had vacated. He pulled his laptop toward him on the table and began typing emphatically away.

“All right, fine, it’s a free galaxy. I can’t force you. Guess I’ll just have to go by myself.”

Heero continued to type, already seemingly oblivious to Duo’s presence.

“It’s just that... well...”

Heero sighed. “It’s just what?”

Duo shrugged. “They have free food at the casinos.”

Heero’s fingers froze over the keys. He stared at Duo, the significance of those words settling over him. Duo flashed him a wide grin.

“So, do you know how to play blackjack?”

* * *

The Andromeda Casino was massive, stretching out across space above the L3 colony, as colorful as its namesake galaxy. Its million lights sparkled in every possible combination of blues, greens, and reds, flashing the attractions of the casino in an ostentatious spectacle. Dotting its expanse were clear elevator tubes that led to the enormous parking garages. Considering Deathscythe was parked in Lot 23, Duo couldn’t begin to imagine just how many people The Andromeda could accommodate in total. Through the clear glass elevator panes they could see all the way down into the grand transparent dome of the main foyer, which had been designed to resemble a desert oasis, complete with palm trees, fountains, and live camels. It was a testament to how much money this place made for L3 that its citizens would let something this unabashedly gaudy shadow the sky over their colony.

“So, you remember the way to do this, right?”

Heero peered out of the elevator, a look of vague discomfort on his face. Floating neon advertisements sailed past them, splashing his face with strange colors. “How is this not illegal again?”

“It’s not illegal, they just don’t like it when you eliminate house advantage. You want to win money on blackjack, you gotta learn to count the cards. It’s as simple as that.”

“They will kick us out if they catch us, though, right?”

“Yeah, probably,” Duo said, shrugging, “so I suggest we eat _before_ we start playing. I don’t know about you, but I’m going to get a steak. I bet they’ve got that nice Martian Delta beef where they massage the cows and feed them beer and shit.”

A neon sign zipped by the elevator and Duo could see Heero smirking slightly in the momentary flash of light. Duo found himself smiling too. Heero really was a strange guy. Getting a smile out of him after that little spat in the cockpit... guess that meant he didn’t hate his guts after all. Every time he managed to get some recognition from him, it felt like a small victory.

They descended like a rocket through the elevator toward the strange carnival of the casino’s main hall below. They could hear the noise long before they arrived, a cacophony of screeching music from the slot machines, and the eager din of the crowd within. Above, the dark form of Lot 23 had already disappeared from view. Nor could they see Zero beyond it, where Wufei piloted in convalescence. Then, their elevator dropped into the haze of flashing lights and sound and even space disappeared behind the frenzy of color. A pleasant female voice announced they had reached their destination.

“You are now entering Andromeda, the Oasis of Space,” the voice intoned with automated exuberance.

Heero and Duo exchanged a look and stepped out into the grand foyer. The elevator lobby was huge, but even that was small in comparison to the size of the casino entrance. The fountain, which had looked small from above, towered over their heads here, water shooting defiantly upwards towards the stars. Camels wandered over the enclosed space around the fountain, utterly disinterested in the people gawking at them as they passed. The palm trees, too, appeared genuine. Duo imagined it must cost a fortune just to have them here.

A costumed waitress, tray expertly balanced on hand, approached them instantly and offered a well-practiced smile from beneath her veil. “Welcome to Andromeda, gentlemen. Would you care for a drink?”

Duo glanced at Heero, who was staring up at the palm trees and scowling. Shrugging, he turned back to the waitress.

“Don’t mind if I do, hot stuff,” he replied, reaching for one of the less colorful choices. He pulled out a couple of credit chips from his pocket and placed them in the small space he’d left behind on her tray. A true professional, she only barely acknowledged the tip.

“The screens overhead offer directions to our attractions,” she continued, indicating the enormous televisions mounted to the walls of the main hall. “Slots and roulette are down the walkway on your left. Card tables are on your right. Our restaurant, the Mirage, is behind you.” She closed the act with an affected bow and sashayed away.

“Still have an appetite after that?” Duo cracked, sipping on his drink. There was a distinct alcoholic aftertaste, past all the fruit and syrup thrown in for appearances. He supposed a casino would want its patrons as drunk as possible, after all, the better to lose money by.

Heero peered at the glass Duo held. “You didn’t seem bothered by it.”

Duo sighed and put a hand on Heero’s shoulder, turning him around in the direction of the restaurant. “You gotta act flashier, Heero, or they’ll be watching you like a hawk. In a place like this, they take notice if you _don’t_ make a scene. ”

“Well, that would explain your suit,” Heero remarked.

“Hey, this is a nice suit!” Duo said, pulling on the white satin lapel. He patted the shoulder his hand rested on, giving Heero’s black dress shirt and slacks a once over. “Anyway, you dressed for this joint all wrong. You look like you’re going on a high school date.”

Heero scowled. “And what about you?”

“Me?” Duo flashed him a wide grin. “I’m on a date with lady luck, baby!”

They maneuvered through the pompous red velvet ropes to the entrance of the restaurant, where a man in a tuxedo led them through a long corridor, depositing them eventually at a small table overlooking the blackjack games on the floor below. Beyond that, a sign denoting the poker area could be seen, and Duo could make out tables even farther past that. This place was really huge; it seemed like there was no end to the options of colorful ways to lose your money.

Duo ordered a prime rib-- not Martian Delta quality, but he couldn’t complain when they were giving it to him for free. The waitress, decked out in another wispy veil-and-pajama number, offered him a refill on his cocktail, which he accepted to Heero’s obvious consternation. When the waitress turned her attention to him, he also ordered the steak but pointedly refused any alcohol. Duo merely raised his eyebrows in response and watched the waitress as she shimmied away in her strange costume.

“No one actually dresses like that in the desert,” Heero said.

“No shit. But I don’t think this place is all that concerned with accuracy. The harem girls are probably the least offensive thing about this place.”

He turned his attention to the blackjack tables below them, bustling with activity. “Let’s see,” Duo said, his eyes scanning the cards he could see. At the table directly below them, the round was going decidedly badly for the players. The best hand was a seventeen, all low-value cards. One guy tapped the table to indicate a hit, only paying half-attention to the game. Receiving a five for his trouble, he morosely ran his hands through his hair and slumped down as the dealer cleaned up the round with a nineteen, silently pocketing the participants’ money.

Another man wandered by the table and sat down, smiling at the dealer, who dealt out the next hand. The luck was better this round, though the first unlucky guy only got a mediocre hand; the newcomer landed a queen and an ace and pocketed twice the money he threw down.

“Heero, check it out,” Duo said. “I think those guys down there are counting.”

Heero peered down at the table below them, watching the next few hands dealt. The first, morose man did only relatively well, betting conservatively without making much headway, but the newcomer fared much better. He bet aggressively and, more times than not, it seemed to pay off.

“How can you tell?” Heero asked.

“I think that guy down there, the one who’s looking all sad for himself, is the counter. He signaled that guy with the big stack of chips over when the table got hot.”

“Hot?” 

“Yeah, you should’ve seen the last few hands. Nothing but low cards. The more low cards that the guy sees, the more high cards he knows are left in the deck. So he called that other guy over, and what do you know, now the new guy’s getting great hands! They’ve probably got guys on a bunch of tables. Watch, when they shuffle the decks again, the second guy is going to leave.”

Sure enough, when the dealer drew a red-marked card and announced that the decks would be shuffled at the beginning of the next round, the newcomer left the table, wandering away down the enormous hall, undoubtedly toward another partner signaling him with better prospects.

“They’ve got a lot of balls to run that kind of game in a place like this,” Duo muttered. “One guy counts cards, and the worst thing they’ll do is throw him out if he gets caught. But everyone knows the casinos are run by the syndicates. They catch a whole operation doing this kind of thing, and they’re going to be pretty pissed off. They’ll do a lot more than just kick them out.”

Their food arrived in record time and they both dived in. It had been ages since Duo had even smelled steak and he tore through it like a man possessed. Judging by Heero’s similar reaction, it seemed it had been a long time for him too. God only knew when they would get another meal like this, anyway. Tomorrow, it would be back to beans and rice for the both of them.

After the meal, they threw down a few credits on the table and made their way to the blackjack area, passing the ridiculous fountain and camel vivarium again. Heero gave it a sidelong glance as they walked by, then stopped dead in his tracks, staring up at it.

“Hey,” Duo said, following Heero’s gaze up the enormous marble structure. “You okay? What’s so great about this fountain?”

Heero continued to stare, his eyebrows furrowed together like he was peering at something strange. But there was nothing strange to speak of, unless you counted the camels. The fountain itself was just a gaudy marble thing, an ornate decoration gilded along its massive pedestal. Duo belatedly realized that this was what Heero was staring at with that weird look on his face.

“You all right, buddy?” He repeated, when Heero didn’t respond.

“I’ve seen that symbol before,” Heero finally announced.

On the large dais of the fountain the gilding formed an abstract shape; two lines, one of which looped back over itself, shining against the white marble.

“Libra,” Heero said, voice low. “It’s a syndicate emblem. The Order of the Zodiac.”

“I’ve heard of them before,” Duo said. Living in a place like L2 all your life, you were bound to learn a thing or two about the people running the underground of polite society. “Well, what did I say? All these casinos are syndicate businesses. Gotta have a front for the drugs, right?”

Heero didn’t respond, continuing to glare at that gold symbol, which didn’t seem very sinister for a group that attracted the kind of rumors that OZ did. He usually took the tall tales with a grain of salt, but there were people who said that OZ’s influence reached all the way to Earth and the universal government. Judging by the over-the-top opulence of the Andromeda, they had capital to spare. It seemed the war had done little to diminish the syndicates’ prosperity.

“Hey, buddy, you all right?” Duo said when Heero made no move to answer him.

Heero finally broke out of his trance and turned to Duo with a scowl. “I’m fine,” he muttered. “Let’s go.”

They made their way toward the grand gambling hall, passing scores of people dressed in expensive and threadbare coats alike. Another waitress swept up to them and offered a drink, and this time Duo declined-- any more alcohol and he’d just be throwing his money away. Heero’s scowl never left his face. Over a drawing on a fountain? Man, he’d need a PHD just to figure this guy out.

The blackjack tables were bustling with activity, and it took them a while just to find a place where they could both sit down. The dealer gave them both a polite nod and dealt them in. Heero’s hand was a seven and a ten; Duo received a queen and eight. Not bad, he supposed, taking a quick scan of the other players’ cards. There were a lot of big numbers on the table. Maybe they had gotten lucky and stumbled on a hot table on their first try. They both stayed and waited to see what the dealer pulled.

From behind them, Duo suddenly heard a stern, angry voice. “Sir, we’re going to have to ask you to come with us.”

What the hell? Unless these guys were mind readers, they couldn’t have possibly known he and Heero were planning to count the cards. They had just started playing!

The dealer and the other players stared at them, obviously just as confused. Well, it wasn’t like they could refuse. He exchanged a glance with Heero before they slowly turned to face the men behind them.

It was a group of heavies, big burly guys, and armed, from the looks of it. They gave him a once-over, then turned their attention to Heero.

“You’ll come with us.”

“What’s this about?” Duo said, making sure to keep his voice level.

The men ignored him. Heero gave him a sidelong look and stood. To Duo’s surprise, the men crowded around him immediately and began to escort him away from the table.

“Hey!” Duo shouted, raising up off his seat. One of the heavies turned to him then and put out a thick arm to block him from following.

“Sir, this is none of your concern,” the man in his way growled. He flashed an ugly smile. “Why don’t you enjoy your card game?”

Duo briefly considered his options. He only had a knife on him, stashed in his boot. He hadn’t expected any trouble, though he was kicking himself now for getting caught unprepared. He could take out one, maybe two of the guys, but not all of them. And then he’d get himself and Heero shot for the trouble. Shit.

He sat down again, knowing he was defeated, and could only watch as the group of heavies shuffled Heero away down the hall.

Well, they weren’t hard to spot in the crowd at least. He waited until they were only just in sight to give chase. They pushed down the crowded hall, past the main foyer, and turned down a huge ornate staircase, and Duo was hot on their tail.

What did they want with Heero? He wondered as he crept down the stairs. What could a syndicate want from a bounty hunter?

He could see the men disappearing behind a large door marked “Staff Only”. It would probably be locked, but Duo wasn’t worried. Lock picks were something he _never_ left behind. He just had to hope that it wouldn’t be guarded, as well.

Silently, he approached the door, looking behind him to make sure he hadn’t been followed himself. The door was locked, as he’d suspected, but nothing fancy. Guess they didn’t need the heavy stuff when they had all that artillery. He pulled a pick out of his inside suit pocket and had the lock open in under a minute. Taking care not to make any noise, he turned the latch and slowly opened the door.

No one fired. Guess it wasn’t guarded after all. Maybe luck _was_ on his side today. Duo slipped through the door and closed it silently behind him. He found himself in a dark hallway, the heavies nowhere to be seen. But wait, there was light after a turn up ahead, and he could hear voices clearly in the empty, echoing hall.

“Here he is, boss, just like you asked.” Duo recognized the ugly growl of the man who had blocked his path. Back against the wall, he inched closer towards the source of the light.

“Heero Yuy,” someone said. They knew Heero by name? “Back from the dead.”

What was going on?

“You’ll have to excuse your rather... blunt handling by my security, but we must take every precaution with you.”

Duo crept closer to the end of the hall, scanning his surroundings for an exit, another way in, anything. The walls were bare, save for a single fire extinguisher. Great, he could spray the guys to death.

He was nearing the end of the hall now, and he could see partway into the room where Heero was being held. Two heavies stood at the door, but their backs were to him. Guess they hadn’t expected him to follow. He couldn’t see Heero past the rest of security, but as he crept closer to the room, he could make out a tall, lean male figure standing in its center. The figure shook his head, and long, platinum blond hair followed the movement. He wore a black trench coat that nearly scraped the floor, and as he turned, he saw that it was emblazoned on the back with the same design as the fountain in the lobby-- the insignia of the Order of the Zodiac.

“Honestly, Heero, I’m a little hurt,” the man continued, his back turned. “Aren’t you happy to see your old partner?”

Partner? His hand on the far wall, Duo paused. What the hell was he talking about?

He didn’t have a chance to find out. There was a grunt, and the crowd of heavies was suddenly pushed back. Heero was trying to bust out!

Angry shouts echoed down the hallway, and the blond-haired man spun to face his captive, but Heero was already taking down his security with almost terrifying ease. Duo watched him jam his palm into the jaw of the nearest guy with a dull thud, and the man immediately went down. He whirled, and his foot connected with another guy’s face. But there were too many, and Duo could see that the guys near the door were reaching for their guns. Shit, he was out of options. He grabbed the fire extinguisher from the wall and pulled it off, not exactly sure what he could do with it.

But it seemed luck was on his side after all. A screeching whine sounded as soon as he had the fire extinguisher in his hands-- the fire alarm!

That got security’s attention, and they whirled around, shouting as they spotted him. Without anything else on hand, Duo hurled the extinguisher at the two nearest guys, managing to knock one down with a direct blow to the head.

All at once, Heero vaulted over the man’s unconscious form, racing toward him down the dark hallway. “Duo!” He yelled, seemingly shocked.

“Thank me later!” He yelled back, and they fled down the hallway, leaving the man who had called himself Heero’s partner behind them, the wail of the alarm blaring around them.

They flew out the security doors and up the massive staircase, not waiting to see if the armed guards were close behind. The casino was in anarchy around them, people stampeding toward the nearest elevators and nearly drowning out the alarm’s cries with their own panicked screams. Heero and Duo slipped into the mob and sprinted for the main lobby.

“There!” Heero yelled, pointing at an open elevator. Among other desperate people, they barely managed to get in just as the doors slammed shut.

“Hope you folks parked in 23!” Duo said, and ripped the electrical panel off the wall. Everything went dark, and the other passengers began screaming. Heero did his best to corral them into a corner of the elevator, scowling at Duo.

“Hurry!” He growled, but Duo ignored him, fingers flying over the computer screen he’d exposed. In seconds, he had the lights on again, and the elevator sailed upwards, certainly faster than the pre-programmed maximum speed. Duo continued to navigate the hacked system, hard-coding Lot 23 as the elevator’s destination. It rocketed away from the Andromeda, which already looked mercifully small and far away beneath them. He hoped they had managed to escape undetected in the chaos below. The other passengers, who had at least stopped screaming when the lights came on again, now stared at the two of them in abject fear.

  
“We just _had_ to go gambling,” Heero muttered, glaring.


End file.
